tri-daily visits to the _table d'hote_.

During these first two days I made many observations from my windows,
and asked numberless questions of the bell-boy. I learned that a certain
old, rambling, two-story building directly across the side street was
the hotel mentioned by Dickens in his "American Notes," and in the lower
passage-way of which he met the Scotch phrenologist, "Doctor Crocus."
The bell-boy whom I have mentioned was the factotum of the Loomis House,
being, in an emergency, hack-driver, porter, runner--all by turns, and
nothing long at a time. He was a quaint genius, named Arthur; and his
position, on the whole, was somewhat more elevated than that of our
English "Boots." During these two days I became quite an expert in the
invention of immediate personal wants; for, as I continued my studies of
local life from the windows of my apartment, I frequently desired
information, and would then ring my bell, hoping that Arthur would be
the person to respond, as he usually was. He was an extremely profane
youth, but profane in a quiet, drawling, matter-of-fact manner. He was
frequently semi-intoxicated by noon, and sometimes quite inarticulate by
9 P.M.; but I never saw him with his bodily equilibrium seriously
impaired--in plainer words, I never saw him stagger. He openly confessed
to a weakness for an occasional glass, but would have repelled with
scorn, perhaps with blows, an insinuation attributing to him excess in
that direction. True, he referred to times in his life when he had been
"caught"--meaning that the circumstances were on those occasions such as
to preclude any successful denial of intoxication; but these occasions,
it was implied, dated back to the period of his giddy youth.

With little to occupy my mind (I had the St. Louis dailies, one of which
was the best newspaper--excepting, of course, our _Times_--that I have
ever read; but my trunks did not arrive until a day or two later, and I