The Heart of the White Mountains, Their Legend and Scenery. Drake Samuel Adams
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George, with decision.
“It’s after the regular dinner,” drawled the apathetic smoker, using his thumb for a stopper, and stooping for a brand with which to relight his pipe.
“In that case we are willing to pay for any additional trouble,” I hastened to say.
The man seemed reflecting. We were hungry; that was incontestable; but we were also shivering, and he maintained his position astride the hearth-stone, like the fabled Colossus of old.
“A cold day,” said the colonel, threshing himself.
“I did not notice it,” returned the stranger, indifferently.
“Only thirty-eight at the door,” said George, stamping his feet with unnecessary vehemence.
“Indeed!” observed our man, with more interest.
“Yes,” George asserted; “and if the fireplace were only larger, or the screen smaller.”
The man hastily stepped aside, knocking over, as he did so, a blazing brand, which he kicked viciously back into the fire.
Having carried the outworks, we approached the citadel. “Perhaps, sir,” I ventured, “you can inform us where the landlord may be found?”
“You wanted dinner, I believe?” The tone in which this question was put gave me goose-flesh. I could not speak, George dropped into a chair. The colonel propped himself against the chimney-piece. I shrugged my shoulders, and nodded expressively to my companions, who returned two glances of eloquent dismay. Evidently nothing was to be got out of this fellow.
“Dinner for one?” continued the eternal smoker.
“For three!” I exclaimed, out of all patience.
“For four; I shall eat double,” added the colonel.
“Six!” shouted George, seizing the dinner-bell on the mantel-piece.
“Stop,” said the man, betraying a little excitement; “don’t ring that bell.”
“Why not?” demanded George; “we want to see the landlord; and, by Jove,” brandishing the bell aloft, “see him we will!”
“He stands before you, gentlemen; and if you will have a little patience I will see what can be done.” So saying, he put his pipe on the chimney-piece, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and went out, muttering, as he did so. “The world was not made in a day.”
In three-quarters of an hour we sat down to a funereal repast, the bare recollection of which makes me ill, but which was enlivened by the following conversation:
“How many inhabitants are in your tract?” I asked of the man who waited on us.
“Do you mean inhabitants?”
“Certainly, I mean inhabitants.”
“Well, that’s not an easy one.”
“How so?”
“Because the same question not only puzzled the State Legislature, but made the attorney-general sick.”
We became attentive.
“Explain that, if you please,” said I.
“Why, just look at it: with only eight legal voters in the tract” (he called it track), “we cast five hundred ballots at the State election.”
“Five hundred ballots! then your voters must have sprung from the ground or from the rocks.”
“Pretty nearly so.”
“Actual men?”
“Actual men.”
“You are jesting.”
My man looked at me as if I had offered him an affront. The supposition was plainly inadmissible. He was completely innocent of the charge.
“You hear those men pounding away up the hill?” he demanded, jerking his thumb in the direction indicated.
“Yes.”
“Well, those are the five hundred voters. On election morning they came to the polling-place with a ballot in one hand, and a pick, a sledge, or a drill in the other. Our supervisor is a very honest, blunt sort of man: he refused their ballots on the spot.”
“Well?”
“Well, one of them had a can of nitro-glycerine and a coil of wire. He deposited his can in a corner, hitched on the wire, and was going out with his comrades, when the supervisor, feeling nervous, said,
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