ad! There's
nothing been seen like it since the Cambon snack. It was all served at
once. The chef called it /dinnay a la poker/. It's a famous thing
among the gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind.
There was guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness's stout; roast veal,
mock turtle soup, and chicken pate; shad-roe, caviar, and tapioca;
canvas-back duck, canvas-back ham, and cotton-tail rabbit;
Philadelphia capon, fried snails, and sloe-gin--and so on, in threes.
The idea was that you eat nearly all you can of them, and then the
waiter takes away the discard and gives you pears to fill on.

"I was sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after
the bobtail flushes he'd been eating on the ranch; and I was a little
anxious that he should, for I didn't remember his having honoured my
efforts with a smile since we left Atascosa City.

"We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd
there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics,
the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so
fast that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and
that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre. And
over in the corner was a fine brass band playing; and now, thinks I,
Solly will become conscious of the spiritual oats of life nourishing
and exhilarating his system. But /nong, mong frang/.

"He gazed across the table at me. There was four square yards of it,
looking like the path of a cyclone that has wandered through a stock-
yard, a poultry-farm, a vegetable-garden, and an Irish linen mill.
Solly gets up and comes around to me.

"'Luke,' says he, 'I'm pretty hungry after our ride. I thought you
said they had some beans here. I'm going out and get something I can
eat. You can stay and monkey with this artificial layout of grub if
you want to.'

"'Wait a minute,' says I.

"I called the waiter, and slapped 'S. Mills' on the back of the check
for thirteen dollars and fifty cents.

"'What do you mean,' says I, 'by serving gentlemen with a lot of truck
only suitable for deck-hands on a Mississippi steamboat? We're going
out to get something decent to eat.'

"I walked up the street with the unhappy plainsman. He saw a saddle-
shop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes. We went in,
and he ordered and paid for two more saddles--one with a solid silver
horn and nails and ornaments and a six-inch border of rh