t in the public streets no private compact can be
of any avail. It is a public mark of disrespect. If you don't regard
us enough to throw away or keep away your cigar when you join us, just
don't join us. Keep your own side of the street. Nobody wants you; at
least I don't. Walk alone if you like, or with whomsoever you can, but
if you walk with me, you shall "behave yourself."

But how frightfully hungry these long coach stages make one! especially
among the mountains. Famine lurks in that wild air, and is ever
springing upon the unwary traveller. The fact was, however, that I had
the most dreadful appetite all the way through. "Really,"
Halicarnassus would say, "it is quite charming to see you in such fine
health," being at the same time reduced to a state of extreme disgust
at my rapacity. He made an estimate, one day, that I had eaten since
we started thirty-one and a half chickens, and I have no doubt I had;
for chickens were my piece de resistance as well as entrees; and then
they WERE chickens, not old hens,--little specks of darlings, just
giving one hop from the egg-shell to the gridiron, and each time the
waiter only brought you one bisegment of the speck, all of whose edible
possibilities could easily be salted down in a thimble. I don't say
this by way of complaint. A thimbleful of delicacy is better than a
"mountain of mummy"; and here let me put in a word in favor of that
much-abused institution, hotels. I cannot see why people should go
about complaining of them as they do, both in literature and in life.
My experience has been almost always favorable. In New York, in
Saratoga, in Canada, all through the mountain district, we found ample
and adequate entertainment for man and beast. Trollope brings his
sledge-hammer down unequivocally. Of course there will be certain
viands not cooked precisely according to one's favorite method, and at
these prolonged dining-tables you miss the home-feeling of quiet and
seclusion; but I should like to know if one does not travel on purpose
to miss the home-feeling? If that is what he seeks, it would be so
easy to stay at home. One loses half the pleasure and profit of
travelling if he must box himself up with his own party. It is a good
thing to triturate against other people occasionally. For eating,
there are, to be sure, the little oval dishes that have so aroused
Trollopian and other ire; and your mutton, it is true, is brought to
you slice-wise, on