Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards
back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees
and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid
the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose
that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate. But when
you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former
grandeur and excellence. But in the story, I have not yet got inside.
When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came
to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter,
feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so. He refused it.
"It's two dollars, suh," he said.
"How's that?" I asked. "I plainly heard you call out at the hotel:
'Fifty cents to any part of the town.'"
"It's two dollars, suh," he repeated obstinately. "It's a long ways from
the hotel."
"It is within the city limits and well within them." I argued. "Don't
think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee. Do you see those hills
over there?" I went on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them,
myself, for the drizzle); "well, I was born and raised on their other
side.
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