Ernest Crosby, Garrison the non-resistant

It happened this way. I had taken a room for the night in a poor hotel (which is a rather uncommon thing in the South). My bedroom was not a comfortable place and the tobacco stains on the walls were revolting. The bed was a bad one, too, and it took me a long time to fall asleep, but at last I succeeded. I must have been sleeping for two or three hours when I heard a loud call in the hallway, “Waitah! Waitah!” Then followed in an undertone a string of drunken, incoherent imprecations. “Dama shame! Never come here again. Treat a gen'leman so,” with a series of unrepeatable oaths getting louder and louder until he bellowed out again, “Waitah, Waitah! Where's my room, Waitah!” I could hear the man shuffling along the corridor, falling from time to time, and trying the doors as he passed, while the various inmates of the rooms, with greater or less eloquence, called down curses upon his head. I expected from moment to moment to hear the report of a revolver, and I wondered how much of an obstruction my door would offer to a bullet, and was quite prepared to slide down behind the bed in case he should try to get into my room. I watched the disturbance auricularly as I have often