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Show X836- 1837J Flaggs Far West 323 prairie in the gray light of dawn. Upon the latter inquiry the old man sat silent a moment with his chin leaning on his hands. Looking up at length with an arch expression, he said, " Stran- ger, I haint no larnin; I can't read; but don't the Book say somewhere about old Jacob and the ring- streaked cattle?" " Yes." " Well, and how old Jake's ring- streaked and round- spotted creeturs, after a leetle, got the better of all the stock, and overrun the univarsai herd; don't the Book say so?" " Something so." " Well, now for the wolves: they're all colours but ring- streaked and round- spotted; and if the sucker- formers don't look to it, the prairie- wolves will get [ 71] the better of all the geese, turkeys, and hins in the barnyard, speckled or no!" My breakfast was now on the table; a substantial fare of corn- bread, butter, honey, fresh eggs, fowl, and coffee, which latter are as invariably visitants at an Illinois table as is bacon at a Kentucky one, and that is saying no little. The exhilarating herb tea is rarely seen. An anecdote will illustrate this matter. A young man, journeying in Illinois, stopped one evening at a log cabin with a violent headache, and requested that never- failing antidote, a cup of tea. There was none in the house; and, having despatched a boy to a distant grocery to procure a pound, he threw himself upon the bed. In a few hours a beverage was handed him, the first swallow of which nearly excoriated his mouth and throat. In the agony of the moment he dashed down the bowl, and rushed half blinded to the fireplace. Over the blaze was suspended a huge iron kettle, half filled with an inky fluid, seething, and boiling, and bubbling, like the witches' caldron of unutterable things in Macbeth. The good old lady, in her anxiety to give her sick guest a strong dish of tea, having never seen the like herself or drank thereof, and supposing it something of the nature of soup, |
