n, but they were
represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench 5
four feet long, and two empty candle boxes. The table
was a greasy board on stilts, and the tablecloth and napkins
had not come--and they were not looking for them, either.
A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup,
were at each man's place, and the driver had a queen's-ware 10
saucer that had seen better days. Of course this
duke sat at the head of the table.

There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore
about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was
the caster. It was German silver and crippled and rusty, 15
but it was so preposterously out of place there that it
was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among barbarians,
and the majesty of its native position compelled respect
even in its degradation. There was only one cruet left,
and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, broken-necked 20
thing, with two inches of vinegar in it and a dozen preserved
flies with their heels up and looking sorry they
had invested there.

The station keeper upended a disk of last week's bread,
of the shape and size of an old-time cheese, and carved some 25
slabs from it which were as good as Nicholson pavement,
and tenderer.

He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the
experienced old hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned
army bacon which the United States would not feed 30
to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage company had
bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and
employees. We may have found this condemned army
bacon further out on the plains than the section I am locating
it in, but we _found_ it--there is no gainsaying that.

Then he poured for us a beverage which he called _slumgullion_
and it is hard to think he was not inspired when 5
he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was
too much dishrag, and sand, and old bacon rind in it to
deceive the intelligent traveler. He had no sugar and no
milk--not even a spoon to stir the ingredients with.

We could not eat the bread or the meat, or drink the 10
"slumgullion." And when I looked at that melancholy
vinegar cruet, I thought of the anecdote (a very, very old
one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat down at a