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.
After we got started Jone seemed to like it very well, and we went
pretty much all over the town, sometimes stopping to look in at the
shop windows, for the sidewalks are so narrow that it is no trouble to
see the things from the street. Then the men took us a little way out
of the town to a place where there was a good view for us, and a bench
where they could go and sit down and rest. I expect all the chair men
that work by the hour manage to get to this place with a view as soon
as they can.
After they had had a good rest we started off to go home by a different
route. Jone's man was a good strong fellow and always took the lead,
but my puller was a different kind of a steed, and sometimes I was left
pretty far behind. I had not paid much attention to the man at first,
only noticing that he was mighty slow; but going back a good deal of
the way was uphill, and then all his imperfections came out plain, and
I couldn't help studying him. If he had been a horse I should have said
he was spavined and foundered, with split frogs and tonsilitis; but as
he was a man, it struck me that he must have had several different
kinds of rheumatism and been sent to Buxton to have them cured, but not
taking the baths properly, or drinking the water at times when he ought
not to have done it, his rheumatisms had all run together and had
become fixed and immovable.
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