Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/169

Rh the argument. "For my part, I'm never happy, except when I've forgotten myself and the whole individual bother."

Her declaration seemed somehow to close the incident, and we were all silent a moment, which I employed in looking about the room, and taking in with my literary sense, the simplicity and even bareness of its furnishing. There was the bed where the invalid lay, and near the head, a table with a pile of books and a kerosene lamp on it, and I decided that she was a good deal wakeful, and that she read by that lamp, when she could not sleep at night. Then there were the hard chairs we sat on, and some homemade hooked rugs, in rounds and ovals, scattered about the clean floor; there was a small melodeon pushed against the wall; the windows had paper shades, and I recalled that I had not seen any blinds on the outside of the house. Over the head of the bed hung a cavalryman's sword, with its belt; the sword that Mrs. Makely had spoken of. It struck me as a room where a great many things might have happened, and I said: "You can't think, Mrs. Camp, how glad I am to see the inside of your house. It seems to me so typical."