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My country! ... My honor! ... My courage and steadfastness! Mockery!" The next morning Warburton was shown into a neat six-by-eight, just off the carriage-room. There was a cot, running water and a wash- stand, and a boot-blacking apparatus. For appearance's sake, Mr. James had purchased a cheap trunk. Everything inside was new, too.
But of course in part explanation of this, you must remember that these New England villages have long been drained of their best. In many cases only the maim, the halt, and the blind are left and these stand no more chance against the modern pioneer than they would against one of their own sturdy forefathers. Another occupation which the Italians seemed to preëmpt was the boot-blacking business.
But the satisfaction arises from the well-doing, and not from the fact that it is Sewing well done; for anything well and thoroughly done, even if it be only boot-blacking on a street corner, or throwing paper torpedoes in a theatre orchestra to imitate the crack of a whip in the "Postilion Galop," gives to its doer the same sense of self-satisfaction.
The celebrated originator of delineations, "Jim Crow Rice," made his first appearance at Hamblin's Bowery Theatre at about this time. The crowds which thronged there were so great that hundreds from the audience were frequently admitted upon the stage. In one of his scenes, Rice introduced a negro boot-blacking establishment.
As the car, in a rapid run, is always slightly projected forward of its trucks, a practical friend once suggested to me that it was the gradual settling back of the car body to a state of inertia, which, of course, every poetical traveler would reject. Four o'clock the sound of boot-blacking by the porter faintly apparent from the toilet-room. Why not talk to him?
"Fish worms, fishhooks, fishlines, bootjack, boot-blacking, and rifle, to say nothing of the dogs and me!" The last was said in a tone as if the "me" were the most objectionable part of the whole, as, indeed, Hugh thought it was. "I wonder how I do look to persons wholly unprejudiced!" Hugh said, and turning to Muggins he asked what she thought of him. "I thinks you berry nice.
In the middle of the square are a pavilion containing two billiard-tables, a boot-blacking arbour, covered with white and yellow jessamine and scarlet and cream-coloured honeysuckle, plenty of flower-beds, full of roses and orange-trees, and a monkey on a pole, who must, poor creature, have a sorry life of it, as it is his business to afford amusement to all the visitors to the baths.
"No," said Dick, "and I haven't seen you for some time either, which is a very curious coincidence." "How's boot-blacking, now?" inquired Roswell, with something of a sneer. "Tip-top," said Dick, not at all disturbed by Roswell's manner. "I do it wholesale now, and have been obliged to hire a large building on Pearl Street to transact my business in. You see them letters?
It was little to the advantage of the Grindstone that it shared its entrance-way with a steamship company and a fire-insurance concern, and was roofed over by a dubious herd of lightweight loan brokers, and undermined by boot-blacking parlours, and barnacled with peanut and banana stands. Such a situation called loudly for betterment.
He wore it secretly at first, but was moved at length to display it to a few chosen friends; not wisely chosen, it would appear, for now there were mockers of Billy among the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion.
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