Very true ... that is correct. And then what?"
"Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M. - got to get
the appointment confirmed - I reckon you'll grant that?"
"Yes ... yes," said Riley, meditatively, "you are
right again. Then you take the train for New York in
the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?"
"That's it - that's the way I map it out!"
Riley considered a while, and then said:
"You couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two
days longer?"
"Bless your soul, no! It's not my style. I ain't a man
to go fooling around - I'm a man that DOES things,
I tell you."
The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts.
Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie,
during a minute or more, then he looked up and said:
"Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's,
once? ... But I see you haven't."
He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him,
fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner,
and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly
and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably
in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted
by a wintry midnight tempest:
"I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time.
Gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man
arrived from Tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning,
with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and
an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of;
he drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord
and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said,
'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman
to wait - said he hadn't time to take anything to eat,
he only had a little claim against the government to collect,
would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch
the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee,
for he was in considerable of a hurry.
