Only two courses remained, either to go back to Clinton, or to remain for the night where they were. "This hotel ought to be able to accommodate us all," remarked a fellow-passenger near them. He might well say so. The portico under which they stood (built of the purest white pine, and modeled after that of a Grecian temple with eight columns) fronted at least eighty feet. The house was several stories high, and if the front were anything more than a mere shell, must contain rooms for two hundred persons. How the building came into its present situation was a mystery to Ashburner; it looked as if it had been transported bodily from some large town, and set down alone in the wilderness. The probability is, that some speculators, judging from certain signs that a town was likely to arise there soon, had built the hotel so as to be all ready for it. There was no need to question the landlord: he had already been diligently assuring every one that he could accommodate all the passengers, who indeed did not exceed a hundred in number. Logicians tell us, that a great deal of the trouble and misunderstanding which exists in this naughty world, arises from men not defining their terms in the outset. The landlord of Hardscrabble had evidently some peculiar ideas of his own as to the meaning of the term _accommodate_. The real state of the case was, that he had any quantity of rooms, and a tolerably liberal supply of bedsteads, but his stock of bedding was by no means in proportion; and he was, therefore, compelled to multiply it by process of division, giving the hair mattress to one, the feather bed to another, the straw bed to a third; and so with the pillows and bolsters as far as they would go. This was rather a long process, even with American activity, especially as some of the hands employed were temporarily called off to attend to the supper table. The meal, which was prepared and eaten with great promptitude, was a mixture of tea and supper. Very good milk, pretty good tea, and pretty bad coffee, represented the drinkables; and for solids, there was a plentiful provision of excellent bread and butter, new cheese, dried beef in very thin slices, or rather _chips_, gingerbread, dough-nuts, and other varieties of home-made cake, sundry preserves, and some pickles. The waiters were young women--some of them very pretty and lady-like. The Bensons kept up a conversation with each other and Ashburner in French, which he suspected to be a customary practice of "our set" when in public, as indeed it was, and one which tended not a little to make them unpopular. A well-dressed man opposite looked so fiercely at them that the Englishman thought he might have partially comprehended their discourse and taken offense at it, till he was in a measure reassured by seeing him eat poundcake and cheese together,--a singularity of taste about which he could not help making a remark to Benson.