Colonel Crocketts Co-operative Christmas | Page 2

nurse and fellow-Mason all in one, was being alone right smart. But it wasn't a patch on the little metrolopis of Manhattan on Santy Claus day.
Then once I had a rather unrestful evening out in the western part of Texas. A fellow sold me a horse right cheap, and later a crowd of gentlemen accused me of stealing it, and I was put in jail with a promise of being lynched before breakfast. That was being uncomfortable some, too. But I wished last night that my friend, Judge Watson, hadn't come along that night and identified me. It would have saved me from New Yorkitis.
Then there was the night when I proposed for your hand and you sent me to your pa, and he said if I ever come near again he'd sic the dogs on me. I spent that night at a safe distance from the dogs, leaning on a fence, and not noticing it was barb wire till I looked at my clothes and my hide next day. I watched your windows till the light went out and all my hope with it--and on after that till, as the poet says, till daylight doth appear.
Then there's the time I told you about, when--but there's no use of making a catalog of every time I've been lonesome. I have taken my pen in hand to inform you that last night beat everything else on my private list of troubles. My other lonely times was when I was alone, but the lonesomest of all was in the heart of the biggest crowd on this here continent.
[Illustration: HE SAID IF I EVER COME NEAR AGAIN HE'D SIC THE DOGS ON ME]
There was people a-plenty. But I didn't know one gol-darned galoot. I had plenty of money, but nobody to spend it on--except tiptakers. I was stopping at this big hotel with lugsury spread over everything, thicker than sorghum on corn pone. But lonely--why, honey, I was so lonely that, as I walked along the streets, I felt as if I'd like to break into some of the homes and compel 'em at the point of my gun to let me set in and dine with 'em.
I felt like asking one of the bell-boys to take me home and get his ma to give me a slice of goose and let her talk to me about her folks.
There was some four million people in a space about the size of our ranch. There was theatres to go to--but who wants to go to the theatre on Christmas?--it's like going to church on the Fourth of July. There were dime muzhums, penny vawdevilles, dance-halls.
There was a big dinner for news-boys. The Salvation Army and the Volunteers gave feeds to the poor. But I couldn't qualify. I wasn't poor. I had no home, no friends, no nothing.
The streets got deserteder and deserteder. A few other wretches was marooned like me in the hotel corridors. We looked at each other like sneak-thieves patroling the same street. Waiters glanced at us pitiful as much as to say, "If it wasn't for shrimps like you, I'd be home with my kids."
The worst of it was, I knew there were thousands of people in town in just my fix. Perhaps some of them were old friends of mine that I'd have been tickled to death to fore-gather with; or leastways, people from my State. Texas is a big place, but we'd have been brothers and sisters--or at least cousins once removed--for Christmas' sake. But they were scattered around at the St. Regis or the Mills Hotel, the Martha Washington or somewhere, while I was at the Waldorf-hyphen-Astoria.
It was like the two men that Dickens--I believe it was Dickens--tells about: Somebody gives A a concertina, but he can't play on it; winter coming on and no overcoat; he can't wear the concertina any more than he can tootle it. A few blocks away is a fellow, Mr. B. He can play a concertina something grand, but he hasn't got one and his fingers itch. He spends all his ready money on a brand-new overcoat, and just then his aunt sends him another one. He thinks he'll just swap one of them overcoats for a concertina. So he advertises in an exchange column. About the same time, A advertises that he'll trade one house-broken concertina for a nice overcoat. But does either A or B ever see B's or A's advertisements? Not on your beautiful daguerreotype.
That was the way with us-all in New York. The town was full of lonesome strangers, and we went moping round, stumbling over each other and not daring to speak.
They call us "transients" here. It's like a common sailor that's lost at sea; he's only a "casualty." So us poor, homeless dogs in New York