He left the door wide open, and the gaslight
streaming in revealed to him the aspect of the cells
arranged for Australian voting. The rails were all in
their places, and the election might take place the very
next day. It instantly occurred to Dane that he might
save the five cents which otherwise he would have given
to his masters of the street railway, and be the next
morning three miles nearer his work, if he spent the
night in the polling-cabin. He looked around for a
minute or two, and found some large rolls of street
posters, which had been left there by some disappointed
canvasser the year before, and which had accompanied one
cell of the cabin in its travels. Dane is a prompt man,
and, in a minute more, he had locked the door behind him,
had struck a wax taper which he had in his cigar-box, had
rolled the paper roll out on the floor, to serve as a
pillow. In five minutes more, covered with his heavy
coat, he lay on the floor, sleeping as soundly as he had
slept the year before, when he found himself on the lee
side of an iceberg under Peary's command.
This is perhaps unnecessary detail, by way of saying
that this is the beginning of the arrangement which a
city, not very intelligent, will make in the next century
for unsettled people, whose own houses are not agreeable
to them. There exist in Boston at this moment three or
four hundred of the polling-booths,--nice little houses,
enough better than most of the peasantry of most of
Europe ever lived in.
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