“Eighteen miles,” answered the traveller.
“Is there no farm on the way?” I rejoined, “for my horse is tired.”
The horseman stared at me in amazement. “Why, Sir,” he answered, “you turn your back to it; you have passed it eighteen miles behind.”
“Impossible!” I exclaimed: “I never left the trail, except to water my horse at a little hut.”
“Well,” he answered, “that was at General Hiram Washington Tippet’s; he keeps the post-office—why, Sir, that was Caledonia city.”
I thanked him, unsaddled my horse, and bivouacked where I was, laughing heartily at my mistake in having asked for ice, when the two sides of the board made post-office.
But I must return to Boston and its court-house. As it was the time of the assizes, some fifty or sixty individuals had come from different quarters, either to witness the proceedings, or to swap their horses, their saddles, their bowie knife, or anything; for it is while law is exercising its functions that a Texian is most anxious to swap, to cheat, to gamble, and to pick pockets and quarrel under its nose, just to shew his independence of all law.
The dinner-bell rang a short time after our arrival, and for the first time in my life I found myself at an American table-d’hôte. I was astonished, as an Indian well might be. Before my companions and self had had time to set down and make choice of any particular dish, all was disappearing like a dream. A general opposite to me took hold of a fowl, and, in the twinkling of an eye, severed the wings and legs. I thought it was polite of him to carve for others as well as himself, and was waiting for him to pass over the dish after he had helped himself, when to my surprise, he retained all he had cut off, and pushed the carcase of the bird away from him. Before I had recovered from my astonishment, his plate was empty. Another seized a plate cranberries, a fruit I was partial to, and I waited for him to help himself first and then pass the dish over to me; but he proved be more greedy than the general, for, with an enormous horn spoon, he swallowed the whole.
The table was now deserted by all except by me and my companions, who, with doleful faces, endeavoured to appease our hunger with some stray potatoes. We called the landlord, and asked him for something to eat; it was with much difficulty that we could get half-a-dozen of eggs and as many slices of salt pork. This lesson was not thrown away upon me; and afterwards, when travelling in the States, I always helped myself before I was seated, caring nothing for my neighbours. Politeness at meals may be and is practised in Europe, or among the Indians, but among the Americans it would be attended with starvation.
After dinner, to kill time, we went to the court-house and were fortunate enough to find room in a position where we could see and hear all that was going on.