candle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts, and the
table-cloth 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 queens-ware 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, 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 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 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 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 "Slum gullion," and it