large animal of the species having crossed my path in the 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 _univarsal_ 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-farmers 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, very innocently and ignorantly poured the whole pound into her largest kettle, and set it a boiling. Poultry is the other standing dish of Illinois; and the poor birds seem to realize that their destiny is at hand whenever a traveller draws nigh, for they invariably hide their heads beneath the nearest covert. Indeed, so invariably are poultry and bacon visitants at an Illinois table, that {72} the story _may_ be true, that the first inquiry made of the guest by the village landlord is the following: "Well, stran-ger, what'll ye take: wheat-bread and _chicken fixens_, or corn-bread and _common doins_?" by the latter expressive and elegant soubriquet being signified bacon.