The next day
he was taken with all the symptoms of cholera morbus, and I had to
keep him up on brandy and capsicum. Rheumatism set in on the
following day, and incapacitated him for work, and I concluded I
had better give him a note to the director of the City Hospital
than keep him here. As a pathological study he was good; but as I
was looking for a man to help about the stable, I couldn't afford
to keep him in both capacities."
As I never could really tell when the Doctor was in joke or in
earnest, I dropped the subject. And so my friend, the Tramp,
gradually faded from my memory, not however without leaving behind
him in the barn where he had slept a lingering flavor of whisky,
onions, and fluffiness. But in two weeks this had gone, and the
"Shebang" (as my friends irreverently termed my habitation) knew
him no more. Yet it was pleasant to think of him as having at last
found a job at brick-making, or having returned to his family at
Milwaukee, or making his Louisiana home once more happy with his
presence, or again tempting the fish-producing main--this time with
a noble and equitable captain.
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