Read "Evening Dress" by William Dean Howells online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Mr. Willis Campbell:" "Hello, hello, hello! "Oh", hello, hello, hello! Wake up, in there! Roberts, wake up! Sound the loud timbrel! Fire, murder, and sudden death! "Wake" up! Monday morning, you know; here's Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, all gone and nothing done! Come, arouse thee, my merry Swiss boy! Take thy pail and to labor away! All aboard! Train for Newton, West Newton, Newtonville, Auburndale, Riverside, and Newton Lower Falls, on track No. 5. Express to Newton. Wake up, Roberts! Here's McIlheny, out here, wants to know why you took his wife for a cook. Hurry up! he can't wait. Wake up, you old seven-by-nine sleeper, you, or Mrs. Miller's musicale will just simply expire on the spot. Come! It's after ten o'clock now, or it will be in about five minutes. Hurry up! Hello, hello, hello!" Campbell accompanies his appeals with a tempest of knocks, thumps, and bangs on the outside of Roberts's chamber door. Within, Roberts is discovered, at first stretched on his bed in profound repose, which becomes less and less perfect as Campbell's blows and cries penetrate to his consciousness. He moves, groans, drops back into slumber, groans again, coughs, sits up on the bed, where he has thrown himself with all his clothes on, and listens. "I say, aren't you going to Mrs. Miller's? If you are, you'd better get out of bed some time before the last call for breakfast. Now ready in the dining-car!"
"Roberts", leaping out of bed and flinging open the door: "Why, I've "been" to Mrs. Miller's!"