Why, look
here!" he says. "What right's a chimney got to be haughty over a
cellar?"
"Oh, keep still, Billy!" says Madge McCulloch, and he closed up,
sudden but cheerful, as if he'd been hit by a kettle.
I said I wouldn't recommend the _Helen Mar_ now, but I'd
recommend hotel keeping as a good and sociable business.
"For," I says, "the seaman travels around the world seeking profit
and entertainment, but the hotel keeper sits at home comfortable, and
they come to him. I've been a hotel-keeper in South America" I says,
"and might have been one in Greenough for the asking. I chose to be a
seaman, and take a look around the world, being foolish and curious.
Now, that was a mistake, for the man that bides in his place for the
main of his life, has the best of it. He knows as much of the world
as another; for if a man goes romping and roaming, and knows no
neighbours and no family of his own, why, sure there's a deal of the
world that he never knows. That's the moral of me," I says, "that's
the moral of me. Now, as to hotel keeping," I says, "I liked that
business as well as anything I ever did. I liked it well," I says,
and I looked around both sides of me, and stopped, for no Madge and
no Billy Corliss was sitting on the fence.
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