RETURN TO SIT MUTTONS.

215

to the supper room, and met two other men whom I had known
elsewhere. How odd and unfair it is: wicked impostors go around
lecturing under my nom de guerre, and nobody suspects them; but
when an honest man attempts an imposture, he is exposed at once.

One thing seemed plain : we must start down the river the next
day, if people who could not be deceived were going to crop up at
this rate : an unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have
a week in St. Louis.
The Southern was a
good hotel, and we could
ha^e had a comfortable
time there. It is large,
and well conducted, and
its decorations do not
make one cry, as do
those of the vast Pal-
mer House, in Chicago.
True, the billiard-tables
were of the Old Silurian
Period, and the cues and
balls of the Post-Plio-
cene ; but there was
refreshment in this, not
discomfort; for there is
rest and healing in the
contemplation of anti-
quities.

The most notable
absence -observable in
the billiard room, was

the absence of the river man. If he was there he had taken in his
sign, he was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and
graces, and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings
of it, which used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-
land crowd in the bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of
St. Louis. In those times, the principal saloons were always populous
with river men; given fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five

UNDER AN AI/IAS.