He says the jug of wine and loaf of bread and Thou in the
wilderness business is about as much rest and pleasure to him as sliding
down the bumps at Coney would be to President Taft. "Give me," says
Pogue, "a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I'm not much
fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe
where I don't find any."
While in the metropolis Pogue can always be found at one of two places.
One is a little second-hand book-shop on Fourth Avenue, where he reads
books about his hobbies, Mahometanism and taxidermy. I found him at
the other--his hall bedroom in Eighteenth Street--where he sat in his
stocking feet trying to pluck "The Banks of the Wabash" out of a small
zither. Four years he has practised this tune without arriving near
enough to cast the longest trout line to the water's edge. On the
dresser lay a blued-steel Colt's forty-five and a tight roll of tens and
twenties large enough around to belong to the spring rattlesnake-story
class. A chambermaid with a room-cleaning air fluttered nearby in the
hall, unable to enter or to flee, scandalized by the stocking feet,
aghast at the Colt's, yet powerless, with her metropolitan instincts,
to remove herself beyond the magic influence of the yellow-hued roll.
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