ndled in the sitting-room, which contained a bed,
an almanac, and some old copies of a newspaper--a rich flavor of cattle,
and talk of the price of steers. As to politics, although a presidential
campaign was raging, there was scarcely an echo of it here. This was
Johnson County, Tennessee, a strong Republican county but dog-gone it,
says Mr. Egger, it's no use to vote; our votes are overborne by the rest
of the State. Yes, they'd got a Republican member of Congress,--he'd
heard his name, but he'd forgotten it. The drover said he'd heard it
also, but he didn't take much interest in such things, though he wasn't
any Republican. Parties is pretty much all for office, both agreed. Even
the Professor, who was traveling in the interest of Reform, couldn't
wake up a discussion out of such a state of mind.

Alas! the supper, served in a room dimly lighted with a smoky lamp, on
a long table covered with oilcloth, was not of the sort to arouse the
delayed and now gone appetite of a Reformer, and yet it did not
lack variety: cornpone (Indian meal stirred up with water and heated
through), hot biscuit, slack-baked and livid, fried salt-pork swimming
in grease, apple-butter, pickled beets, onions and cucumbers raw, coffee
(so-called), buttermilk, and sweet milk when specially asked for (the
correct taste, however, is for buttermilk), and pie. This was not the
pie of commerce, but the pie of the country,--two thick slabs of
dough, with a squeezing of apple between. The profusion of this supper
staggered the novices, but the drovers attacked it as if such cooking
were a common occurrence and did justice to the weary labors of Mrs.
Egger.

Egger is well prepared to entertain strangers, having several rooms and
several beds in each room. Upon consultation with the drovers, they said
they'd just as soon occupy an apartment by themselves, and we gave up
their society for the night. The beds in our chamber had each one sheet,
and the room otherwise gave evidence of the modern spirit; for in one
corner stood the fashionable aesthetic decoration of our Queen Anne
drawing-rooms,--the spinning-wheel. Soothed by this concession to taste,
we crowded in between the straw and the home-made blanket and sheet, and
soon ceased to hear the barking of dogs and the horned encounters of the
drovers' herd.

We parted with Mr. Egger after breakfast (which was a close copy of
the supper) with more respect than regret. His total charge for
the entertainm