Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/283

 with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I'd advise you to ' put up at Gadsby's ' for a spell, and take it easy. Goodbye. God bless you!"

So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished school teacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street lamp.

He never got that post-office.

To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees somebody hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up at Gadsby's" and take it easy. It is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it. One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all,—the recent dog and the translated cat.