t have
anything to eat."

"Sit down, gentlemen," says the landlord, "and in twenty minutes I'll
call you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere in town."

That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a
yellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and
flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets
out a dish of the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so
me and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food that
enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearly
four years at a stretch.

"The wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boys
didn't chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay.
It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!"

"Hog and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this section."

"Then," says Caligula, "they ought to keep it where it belongs. I
thought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogee
at the St. Lucifer House, I'd show you some breakfast grub. Antelope
steaks and fried liver to begin on, and venison cutlets with _chili
con carne_ and pineapple fritters, and then some sardines and mixed
pickles; and top it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle of
beer. You won't find a layout like that on the bill of affairs of any
of your Eastern restauraws."

"Too lavish," says I. "I've traveled, and I'm unprejudiced. There'll
never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long
enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over to
Norfolk for his rolls, and reaches up to Vermont and digs a slice of
butter out of a spring-house, and then turns over a beehive close to a
white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty
close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount
Olympia."

"Too ephemeral," says Caligula. "I'd want ham and eggs, or rabbit
stew, anyhow, for a chaser. What do you consider the most edifying and
casual in the way of a dinner?"

"I've been infatuated from time to time," I answers, "with fancy
ramifications of grub such as terrapins, lobsters, reed birds,
jambolaya, and canvas-covered ducks; but after all there's nothing
less displeasing to me than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on
a balcony in sound of the Broadway streetcars, with a hand-organ
playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest
suicide. For the wine, give