The Only Sensible Thing For You To
Do Is To Take A Bath-Chair And Go Around And See Things.
And if you are
afraid people will think you are being taken to a hospital, you can put
down the top of the thing, and sit up straight and smoke your pipe.
Patients in ambulances never smoke pipes.
And if you don't want me
walking by your side like a trained nurse, I'll take another chair and
be pulled along with you."
The idea of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his
fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went
to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing
at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting
for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very
comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses.
Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they
had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And
then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses
on a farm, that the women drive to town.
Jone picked out a good man, who looked as if he was well broken and not
afraid of locomotives and able to do good work in single harness. When
I got Jone in the bath-chair, with the buggy-top down, and his pipe
lighted, and his hat cocked on one side a little, so as to look as if
he was doing the whole thing for a lark, I called another chair, not
caring what sort of one it was, and then we told the men to pull us
around for a couple of hours, leaving it to them to take us to
agreeable spots, which they said they would do.
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