The long tables for Jim Britt’s dinner were spread in a dining room upstairs. There were fifty covers, and room for twenty more should twenty come. The apartment itself was a jungle of tropical plants, and the ground plan of the feast laid on a scale of bill-threatening magnificence. This was but right. For when the steward would have consulted the exultant Jim Britt whose florid imaginings had quite carried him off his feet, that gentleman said simply: “Make the play with the bridle off! Don’t pinch down for a chip.” Thereupon the steward cast aside restraint and wandered forth upon that dinner with a heart care-free and unrestrained. He would make of it a moment of terrapin and canvas-back and burgundy which time should date from and folk remember for long to the Chamberlin praise. Saturday arrived, and throughout the afternoon Jim Britt, by grace of the good steward, who had a pride of his work and loved applause, teetered in and out of the dining room and with dancing eye and mouth ajar gave rein to admiration. It would be a mighty dinner; it would land his bill in his successful hands, and make, besides, a story to amaze the folk of Last Chance to a standstill. These be not our words; rather they flowed as the advance jubilations of Jim Britt. There was one thought to bear upon Jim Britt to bashful disadvantage. The prospect of entertaining fifty statesmen shook his confidence and took his breath. To repair these disasters he called privily from time to time for whiskey. It was not over-long before he talked thickly his encomiums to the steward. On his last visit to survey that fairyland of a dining room, Jim Britt counted covers laid for several hundred guests; what was still more wondrous, he believed they would come and the prospect rejoiced him. There were as many lights, too, in the chandeliers as stars of a still winter’s night, while the apartment seemed as large as a ten-acre lot and waved a broad forest of foliage. That he might be certainly present on the arrival of the first guest--for Jim Britt knew and felt his duties as a host--Jim Britt lay down upon a lounge which, to one side, was deeply, sweetly bowered beneath the overhanging palms. Then Jim Britt went earnestly to sleep and was no more to be aroused than a dead man. The Statesman from Tupelo appeared; by twos and threes and tens, gathered the guests; Jim Britt slept on the sleep of innocence without a dream. A steering committee named to that purpose on the spot by the Statesman from Tupelo, sought to recover Jim Britt to a knowledge of his fortunate honors. Full sixty guests were there, and it was but right that he be granted the pleasure, not to say the glory, of their acquaintance. It was of no avail; Jim Britt would not be withdrawn from slumbers deep as death. The steering committee suspended its labors of restoration. As said the chairman in making his report, which, with a wine glass in his hand, he subsequently did between soup and fish: