It give me the crawls to look at
her, her chins shook around so. Ho! ho! she had no less'n three of 'em,
and they all shook different ways. Ho! ho! ho! If I'd been in the habit
of wearin' false hair or teeth or anything that wa'n't growed to or
buttoned on me I'd never have risked a trip in one of those omnibuses.
"So when the police officer prescribed one for me this v'yage, I was
some dubious. I'm older'n I was ten year ago, and I wa'n't sure that I'd
hold together. I cal'lated walkin' was better for my health. So I found
Fifth Avenue and started to walk. And the farther I walked the heavier
that blessed satchel of mine got. It weighed maybe ten or twelve pounds
at the corner of 42nd Street, but when I got as far as the open square
where the gilt woman is hurryin' to keep from bein' run over by Gen'ral
Sherman on horseback--that statue, you know--I wouldn't have let that
blessed bag go for less'n two ton, if I was sellin' it by weight. So
I leaned up against an electric light pole to rest and sort of get my
bearin's. Then I noticed what I'd ought to have seen afore, that the
street wa'n't paved with cobbles, as it used to be, but was smooth as
a stretch of state road down home. So I figgered that a bus was a safe
risk, after all. I waited ten minutes or more for one to come, and
finally I asked a woman who was in tow of an astrakhan-trimmed dog at
the end of a chain, if the omnibuses had stopped runnin'.
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