The teamsters sat down in patience; a few of the more elegant sort cleaned their nails with the three-tine forks, others picked their teeth with them, and nearly all speared with this implement small specimens from the dishes before them, securing a pickle or a square inch of pie or even that luxury, a dried apple; a few, on tilted-back chairs, drummed upon the bottom of their plates the latest tune of the road. When fairly under way the scene became active and animated beyond belief. Waiters, balancing upon their arms twenty or thirty plates, hurried along and shot them dexterously over the teamsters' heads with crash and spatter. Beans swimming in fat, meats slimed with pale, ropy gravy, and over everything a faint Mongol odor,--the flavor of moral degeneracy and of a disintegrating race. Sharks and wolves may no longer be figured as types of prandial haste. My friends, the teamsters, stuffed and swallowed with a rapidity which was alarming but for the dexterity they showed, and which could only have come of long practice. In fifteen minutes the room was empty, and those fellows who were not feeding grain to their mules lighted cigars and lingered round the bar. Just then my artist rushed in, seized me by the arm, and said in my ear, "We'll have _our_ supper over to Mrs. Copples's. O no, I guess not--Sarah Jane--arms peeled--cooking up stuff--old woman gone into the milk-room with a skimmer." He then added that if I wanted to see what I had been spared, I might follow him. We went round an angle of the building and came upon a high bank, where, through wide-open windows, I could look into the Chinese kitchen. By this time the second table of teamsters were under way, and the waiters yelled their orders through to the three cooks. This large, unpainted kitchen was lighted up by kerosene lamps. Through clouds of smoke and steam dodged and sprang the cooks, dripping with perspiration and grease, grabbing a steak in the hand and slapping it down on the gridiron, slipping and sliding around on the damp floor, dropping a card of biscuits and picking them up again in their fists, which were garnished by the whole bill of fare. The red papers with Chinese inscriptions, and little joss-sticks here and there pasted upon each wall, the spry devils themselves, and that faint, sickening odor of China which pervaded the room, combined to produce a sense of deep, sober gratitude that I had not risked their fare. "Now," demanded Smith, "you see that there little white building yonder?" I did. He struck a contemplative position, leaned against the house, extending one hand after the manner of the minstrel sentimentalist, and softly chanted: "''Tis, O, 'tis the cottage of me love;' "and there's where they're getting up as nice a little supper as can be found on this road or any other. Let's go over!"