AN HOTEL IN THE FAR WEST.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 647, 12 March 1870, Page 4

AN HOTEL IN THE FAR WEST.

The Hotel Knoudles, kept by Missourians, contained a family with two heads, as I supposed, for a tall, bony, sharplooking woman was certainly one head, and it wa3 but fair to conclude that a robust-looking man, who sat smoking a pipe in the 'corner, and whom she called "old man," was the other, though the •woman was "plainly dominant that day. Six rather soiled, soggy-looking boys made up the remainder of the occupants of the two rooms of the Hotel Knoudles. As I had fasted since five in the morning, or rather since the night before, I hoped to find something here to sustain me on the rest of my dreary way, which bade fair to be, without any extraneous aid from imagination, a perilous one. I was wet and thoroughly chilled, and as 1 drew towards the stove I asked — being unaccustomed to either tea or coffee — if I could have a teaspoohfnlof ginger in a cupcif hot water. " Hain't got no ginger," replied the landlady, in a piping voice. " Have you any pepper ?" "Hain't got none of that neither. Can't you en *. such victuals as other folks does ?'"— st 11 louder and shriller. ' ' Set up't the stove nigher," — almost in a shriek. And she beti.ok herself to stirring the fire so sturdily that stove, " old man," and pipe were threatened with instant overthrow, aud the men instinctively broke the circle around- them, and stood back panicstruck. Afterthis stirring interlude, she planted herself before me, as near as she could well approach, and, with hands upon her hips and arms akimbo, she shouted once more, as if hailing a distant sail, "Stay? we've got some pickled peppers. Theni'll warm yer up." And she grasped the back of my chair as if she intended to shake me out of it upon the floor. "Ef yer'l hist (hoist) I'll fotch yer cheer up ter the table." However unintelligible her language was, I had no difficulty in discovering that she wanted my : chair^ and so I arose. When I was seated at the board— or two boards placed side by side on four barrels, two at each end, and covered with an unbleached cotton cloth, which probably served for a sheet by night and table-cloth by day—l :found that the woman had by sonic witchcraft discovered my antipathies, and placed before 'me three articles which I never taste— liver, onions, and potatoes fried in the same pan with the first two articles. In despair, I saw I must betake myself to dry bread, if I could find' any ; for the cows had not " come up" yer, and there was no sweet milk in the house. I found, on examination of the pile, " a job lot" of Indian crusts, nibbled in scallops — probably by the boy 3' or the mice — on all sides, and I presumed to ask if she had no more bread. "No; we hain't got no more meal in the house. Can't you eat such victuals as other, folks eats, no how. My eld man oughter gone to mill to-day, but he's.skeered of rain, and too shiftless to aim his salt." The driver, who sat on one side of me, told me, in an undertone, that she was lovely compared with an unmarried sister of hers. Spying from the window in front of me two handsome roosters in the yard, dripping like weeping willows in the rain, I concluded their families were not far off, aud as a last resort in myextreimity, I enquired, if there were any eggs in the house. She hesitated, and while I was expecting an earthquake or a volcano^ in answer to my question, my bnrly friend, who had by this time become furious, suddenly dropped his knife and fork, and, turning round, shouted in the most unexpected and peremptory manner: " Cook, some esigs for this lady ! Quick ! If you don't I'll search the house. I know you've got some. Come, be quick about it." To my great jpy, a dozen eggs- soon appeared, boiled very palatably, and on these and pickled peppers I made my first and last meal for the day.— "A Lone Woman's Trip to the Omaha and Beyond, "in the "Atlantic Monthly." ■ ...-.■■ .., .