Jim, and cried out that it was a paradise.
"Mebbe 'tis," sneered Jim, "Anyway, it's got more'n one devil into it. Gil—lang!"
And under the inspiration of the scenery, Albert, with the impulsiveness of a young man, unfolded to Whisky Jim all the beauties of his own theories: how a man should live naturally and let other creatures live; how much better a man was without flesh-eating; how wrong it was to speculate, and that a speculator gave nothing in return; and that it was not best to wear flannels, seeing one should harden his body to endure cold and all that; and how a man should let his beard grow, not use tobacco nor coffee nor whisky, should get up at four o'clock in the morning and go to bed early.
"Looky here, mister!" said the Superior Being, after a while. "I wouldn't naow, ef I was you!"
"Wouldn't what?"
"Wouldn't fetch no sich notions into this ked'ntry. Can't afford tew. 'Taint no land of idees. It's the ked'ntry of corner lots. Idees is in the way—don't pay no interest. Haint had time to build a 'sylum fer people with idees yet, in this territory. Ef you must have 'em, why let me rec-ommend Bost'n. Drove hack there wunst, myself." Then after a pause he proceeded with the deliberation of a judge: "It's the best village I ever lay eyes on fer idees, is Bost'n. Thicker'n hops! Grow single and in bunches. Have s'cieties there fer idees. Used to make money outen the fellows with idees, cartin 'em round to anniversaries and sich. Ef you only wear a nice slick plug-hat there, you kin believe anything you choose or not, and be a gentleman all the same. The more you believe or don't believe in Bost'n, the more gentleman you be. The don't-believers is just as good as the believers. Idees inside the head, and plug-hats outside. But idees out here! I tell you, here it's nothin' but per-cent." The Superior Being puckered his lips and whistled. "Git up, will you! G'lang! Better try Bost'n."
Perhaps Albert Charlton, the student passenger, was a little offended with the liberty the driver had taken in rebuking his theories. He was full of "idees," and his fundamental idea was of course his belief in the equality and universal brotherhood of men. In theory he recognized no social distinctions. But the most democratic of democrats in theory is just a little bit of an aristocrat in feeling—he doesn't like to be patted on the back by the hostler; much less does he like to be reprimanded by a stage-driver. And Charlton was all the more sensitive from a certain vague consciousness that he himself had let down the bars of his dignity by unfolding his theories so gushingly to Whisky Jim. What did Jim know—what could a man who said "idees" know—about the great world-reforming thoughts that engaged his attention? But when dignity is once fallen, all the king's oxen and all the king's men can't stand it on its legs again. In such a strait, one must flee from him who saw the fall.
Albert Charlton therefore determined that he would change to the inside of the coach when an opportunity should offer, and leave the Superior Being to sit "wrapped in the solitude of his own originality."
CHAPTER II.
THE SOD TAVERN.
Here and there Charlton noticed the little claim-shanties, built in every sort of fashion, mere excuses for pre-emption. Some were even constructed of brush. What was lacking in the house was amply atoned for by the perjury of the claimant who, in pre-empting, would swear to any necessary number of good qualities in his habitation. On a little knoll ahead of the stage he saw what seemed to be a heap of earth. There must have been some inspiration in this mound, for, as soon as it came in sight, Whisky Jim began to chirrup and swear at his horses, and to crack his long whip threateningly until he had sent them off up the hill at a splendid pace. Just by this mound of earth he reined up with an air that said the forenoon route was finished. For this was nothing less than the "Sod Tavern," a house built of cakes of the tenacious prairiesod. No other material was used except the popple-poles, which served for supports to the sod-roof. The tavern was not over ten feet high at the apex of the roof; it had been built for two or three years, and the grass was now growing on top. A red-shirted publican sallied out of this artificial grotto, and invited the ladies and gentlemen to dinner.
It appeared, from a beautifully-engraved map hanging on the walls of the Sod Tavern, that this earthly tabernacle stood in the midst of an ideal town. The map had probably been constructed by a poet, for it was quite superior to the limitations of sense and matter-of-fact. According to the map, this solitary burrow was surrounded by Seminary, Depôt, Court-House, Woolen Factory, and a variety of other potential institutions, which composed the flourishing city of New Cincinnati. But the map was meant chiefly for Eastern circulation.
Charlton's dietetic theories were put to the severest test at the table. He had a good appetite. A ride in the open air in Minnesota is apt to make one hungry. But the first thing that disgusted Mr. Charlton was the coffee, already poured out, and steaming under his nose. He hated coffee because he liked it; and the look of disgust with which he shoved it away was the exact measure of his physical craving for it. The solid food on the table consisted of waterlogged potatoes, half-baked salt-rising bread, and salt-pork. Now, young Charlton was a reader of the Water-Cure Journal of that day, and despised meat of all things, and of all meat despised swine's flesh, as not even fit for Jews; and of all forms of hog, hated fat salt-pork as poisonously indigestible. So with a dyspeptic self-consciousness he rejected the pork, picked off the periphery of the bread near the crust, cautiously avoiding the dough-bogs in the middle; but then he revenged himself by falling furiously upon the aquatic potatoes, out of which most of the nutriment had been soaked.
Jim, who sat alongside him, doing cordial justice to the badness of the meal, muttered that it wouldn't do to eat by idees in Minnesoty. And with the freedom that belongs to the frontier, the company begun to discuss dietetics, the fat gentleman roundly abusing the food for the express purpose, as Charlton thought, of diverting attention from his voracious eating of it.
"Simply despicable," grunted the fat man, as he took a third slice of the greasy pork. "I do despise such food."
"Eats it like he was mad at it," said Driver Jim in an undertone.
But as Charlton's vegetarianism was noticed, all fell to denouncing it. Couldn't live in a cold climate without meat. Cadaverous Mr. Minorkey, the broad-shouldered, sad-looking man with side-whiskers, who complained incessantly of a complication of disorders, which included dyspepsia, consumption, liver-disease, organic disease of the heart, rheumatism, neuralgia, and entire nervous prostration, and who was never entirely happy except in telling over the oft-repeated catalogue of his disgusting symptoms—Mr. Minorkey, as he sat by his daughter, inveighed, in an earnest crab-apple voice, against Grahamism. He would have been in his grave twenty years ago if it hadn't been for good meat. And then he recited in detail the many desperate attacks from which he had been saved by beefsteak. But this pork he felt sure would make him sick. It might kill him. And he evidently meant to sell his life as dearly as possible, for, as Jim muttered to Charlton, he was "goin' the whole hog anyhow."
"Miss Minorkey," said the fat gentleman checking a piece of pork in the middle of its mad career toward his lips, "Miss Minorkey, we should like to hear from you on this subject." In truth, the fat gentleman was very weary of Mr. Minorkey's pitiful succession of diagnoses of the awful symptoms and fatal complications of which he had been cured by very allopathic doses of animal food. So he appealed to Miss Minorkey for relief at a moment when her father had checked and choked his utterance with coffee.
Miss Minorkey was quite a different affair from her father. She was thoroughly but not obtrusively healthy. She had a high, white forehead, a fresh complexion, and a mouth which, if it was deficient in sweetness and warmth of expression, was also free from all bitterness and aggressiveness. Miss Minorkey
