Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-70.djvu/152

142 hotel. No tobacco was ever so good. About nine next day, being Sunday, I smoked my second cigar and counted my cash:

Of this thirty cents had gone to sustain life and four cents to make it cheerful. I could have wired to New York, but then I must live, and it seemed well that I should keep up my strength, and my hunger was that of a convalescent.

As I sauntered into town this Sunday morning I saw my grizzled dog slaking his thirst at a wayside stream, where I stayed to wash my bandages. I dried them and replaced them with difficulty. As I entered the town, the dog at my heels, I heard a church-bell ringing. I am sorry to say it only suggested the brilliant idea that here was a place where I could rest. I went into the bare brick chapel with the want of assurance bred of being ill clad and of the treatment to which I had been subjected. I did not expect to be received with that eager hospitality which in city churches so warmly welcomes a disreputable-looking man, but by good-luck it was very hot and the congregation was scanty. I entered a well-cushioned pew far back and near to the door. No one came to my pew. When the service began I arranged my cushions and enjoyed comfort unknown for days. I slept through the sermon, which seemed to me quite too brief.

I think my canine friend missed me, for just as the sermon began he scratched at the door of the pew. It was not my business, and I let him amuse himself. Someone told him to get out, which he apparently misunderstood, for he walked lazily along the aisle and went up into the pulpit. The preacher, in apparent uneasiness, asked someone to remove that dog. My tramp did not wait, but, conscious of being unwelcome, went down the middle aisle and out of the church. If there be a religion for dogs, he had not found it here. After this I fell asleep, as I have said.

After church I spent ten cents on milk and bread and priced a pipe; it was beyond my means. I found, as I expected, that I could not telegraph on the Sabbath. I recall that latter half-day as the only one in which I felt at all bored during this Bohemian time.

Milk and bread seemed to lack permanence as a diet, and at dusk I was cruelly hungry; but, resolved on economy, I tried two farm-houses before I could get as much as a crust, and it was eight o'clock when I persuaded an old woman that I needed help. I drank her sour milk