BOBBIT’S HOTEL. 39

the clouds and the sleet came up. For there is a greater dif-
ference in the streets than you would ever suspect, unless
you should belong to them, and have nothing to do but watch
them, like Bobbit. They have their “ scrub-days” and their
dress-days, like you or me or anybody else but Bobbit, whose
whole life had been a “ scrub-day,” from beginning to end, —
and neither you nor I nor anybody else but just Bobbit him-
self can know, I suppose, what that may mean.

“It’s a brick of a night to have supper,” said Bobbit,
standing in the snow-drift, — “ a brick.”

Bobbit talked slang, to be sure, never having enjoyed the
benefits of what we call a “liberal education”; yet I am not
sure, after all, that a Harvard graduate would have under-
stood Bobbit if he had stood in the snow-drift and heard what
he said. In fact, you would have to know that Bobbit did
not have a supper every night, to understand it altogether.
and even then I do not think you would understand it, un-
less you were to go without your supper two or three nights
— or even one — yourself.

Tuesday Bobbit had a dinner; Monday he picked up quite
a breakfast; to-day he would have a dinner and a supper
too, it had been so stormy ; there had been a good many gen-
tlemen afraid to leave their horses ; Bobbit had learned from
long-experience to tell by the color of a horse, or by his hoofs
or his ears, whether he would be restless in a sleet-storm.
He had earned ten cents since noon holding cream-colored
horses with black manes, and five for a little mouse-colored
mare just shaved.