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52 ing patches you looked like you were made up to play a busted soda in the church cantata.

Hotel tailors overcharge you, all right, but they do things quick and they get their mistakes back on time.

And it’s more fun fighting with stranger than with relatives, because once in a while the cops think you are right. And if you want to sleep late there ain't nobody to hammer of the door and ask if you're awake, and no kids playing leapfrog on the chandeliers. When a man is feeling sick in a hotel he don't have to ask any questions and that angel's ministering hand on the fevered brow might be all right in poems, but cracked ice was a darned fine imitation, and don't pull any of that Thomas Edison questionnaire business.

Alex wasn't exactly against family institutions, but when a man is away from home for so long he forgets the language. He used to say that home comforts and privacy were legends handed down from the time when folks lived in jungles, and that life in hotels and upper berths proved the Darwinian theory enough to please him.

He lived in upper berths so much that any time he came home he used to go up on the roof and