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 have 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 Palmer House, in Chicago.

True, the billiard-tables were of the Old Silurian Period, and the cues and balls of the Post-Pliocene; but there was refreshment in this, not discomfort; for there is rest and healing in the contemplation of antiquities.
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 were likely to be from the river.