ld chop me up
some lettuce and powder it with granulated sugar and pour a little
vinegar over it and bring it in to me with the rest of the grub. Where I
was raised we always had chewing tobacco for the salad course, anyhow."

The head waiter's whole being recoiled from the bare prospect. He seemed
on the point of swooning, but looked at the money and came to.

"Dessert?" he added, poising a pencil.

"Well," said the man reflectively, "I don't suppose you could fix me up
some ambrosia--that's sliced oranges with grated cocoanut on top. And in
this establishment I doubt if you know anything about boiled custard,
with egg kisses bobbing round it and sunken reefs of sponge cake
underneath. So I guess I'd better compromise on some plum pudding; but
mind you, not the imported English plum pudding. English plum pudding is
not a food, it's a missile, and when eaten it is a concealed deadly
weapon. I want an American plum pudding. Mark well my words--an
American plum pudding.

"And," he concluded, "if you can bring me these things, just so, without
any strange African sauces or weird Oriental fixings or trans-Atlantic
goo stirred into them or poured on to them or breathed upon them, I
shall be very grateful to you, and in addition I shall probably make you
independently wealthy for life."

It was quite evident that the head waiter regarded him as a
lunatic--perhaps only a lunatic in a mild form and undoubtedly one
cushioned with ready money--but nevertheless a lunatic. Yet he indicated
by a stately bow that he would do the best he could under the
circumstances, and withdrew to take the matter up with the house
committee.

"Now this," said the man, "is going to be something like. To be sure the
table is not set right. As I remember how things used to look at home
there should be a mustache cup at Uncle Hiram's plate, so he could drink
his floating island without getting his cream-separators mussy, and
there ought to be a vinegar cruet at one end and a silver cake basket at
the other and about nine kinds of pickles and jellies scattered round;
and in the center of the table there should be a winter bouquet--a nice,
hard, firm, dark red winter bouquet--containing, among other things, a
sheaf of wheat, a dried cockscomb and a couple of oak galls. Yet if the
real provender is forthcoming I can put up with the absence of the
proper settings and decorations."

He had ample leisure for these thoughts, because, as you yourself m