After office-hours, I took a cab, and
set out with my clerk, to pay a visit to the Asylum, taking the American
Hotel in our way.
The American Hotel is a small house, not at all such a one as American
travellers of any pretension would think of stopping at, but still very
respectable, cleanly, and with a neat sitting-room, where the guests
might assemble, after the American fashion. We asked for the landlady,
and anon down she came, a round, rosy, comfortable-looking English dame
of fifty or thereabouts. On being asked whether she knew a Mr. ------,
she readily responded that he had been there, but, had left no luggage,
having taken it away before paying his bill; and that she had suspected
him of meaning to take his departure without paying her at all. Hereupon
she had traced him to the hotel before mentioned, where she had found
that he had stayed two nights,--but was then, I think, gone from thence.
Afterwards she encountered him again, and, demanding her due, went with
him to a pawnbroker's, where he pledged his watch and paid her. This was
about the extent of the landlady's knowledge of the matter. I liked the
woman very well, with her shrewd, good-humored, worldly, kindly
disposition.
Then we proceeded to the Lunatic Asylum, to which we were admitted by a
porter at the gate. Within doors we found some neat and comely
servant-women, one of whom showed us into a handsome parlor, and took my
card to the Governor.
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