“Jim,” continued the mighty dead, “how fur’s this thing gone?”

“I’ve paid the Chinaman two-and-a-half to dig the grave,” responded the bereaved.

“Did he strike anything?”

The Chinaman looked up:  “Me strikee pay dirt; me no bury dead ’Melican in ’em grave.  Me keep ’em claim.”

The corpse sat up erect:  “Jim, git my revolver and chase that pig-tail off.  Jump his dam sepulchre, and tax his camp five dollars each fer prospectin’ on the public domain.  These Mungolyun hordes hez got to be got under.  And-I say-Jim! ’f any more serpents come foolin’ round here drive ’em off.  ‘T’aint right to be bitin’ a feller when whisky’s two dollars a gallon.  Dern all foreigners, anyhow!”

And the mortal part pulled on its boots.  Tall talk.  A Call to Dinner.

When the starving peasantry of France were bearing with inimitable fortitude their great bereavement in the death of Louis le Grand, how cheerfully must they have bowed their necks to the easy yoke of Philip of Orleans, who set them an example in eating which he had not the slightest objection to their following.  A monarch skilled in the mysteries of the cuisine must wield the sceptre all the more gently from his schooling in handling the ladle.  In royalty, the delicate manipulation of an omelette souffl‚ is at once an evidence of genius, and an assurance of a tender forbearance in state policy.  All good rulers have been good livers, and if all bad ones have been the same this merely proves that even the worst of men have still something divine in them.

There is more in a good dinner than is disclosed by the removal of the covers.  Where the eye of hunger perceives but a juicy roast, the eye of faith detects a smoking God.  A well-cooked joint is redolent of religion, and a delicate pasty is crisp with charity.  The man who can light his after-dinner Havana without feeling full to the neck with all the cardinal virtues is either steeped in iniquity or has dined badly.  In either case he is no true man.  We stoutly contend that that worthy personage Epicurus has been shamefully misrepresented by abstemious, and hence envious and mendacious, historians.  Either his philosophy was the most gentle, genial, and reverential of antique systems, or he was not an Epicurean, and to call him so is a deceitful flattery.  We hold that it is morally impossible for a man to dine daily upon the fat of the land in courses, and yet deny a future state of existence, beatific with beef, and ecstatic with all edibles.  Another falsity of history is that of Heliogabalus-was it not?-dining off nightingales’ tongues.  No true gourmet would ever send this warbler to the shambles so long as scarcer birds might be obtained.