My landlord’s proposition was at once accepted, and I offered to pay him for three meals in advance, to which he replied, “Dat dree pays at one time was not in de corntract.”  “You have forgotten one point,” I said, addressing him as he led me to the kitchen, where “mine frau” was up to her elbows in work.  “And what ish dat?” he asked, rather suspiciously eying me.  “You have not fixed a price for my lodgings.”  “De use of de peddothes costs me notting, so I never charges for de lodgings wen de boarder washes himself every day,” answered mine host.  Having settled this point, and ordered his wife, in commanding terms, “to gib dish man his breakfast,” he withdrew.  The woman treated me very kindly, apologizing for her husband’s exacting demands by assuring me that “Nobody knows who’s when nowadays.  Seems as if everybody had got ’moralized by de war.”  The coffee the good lady made me, though thoroughly boiled, was excellent, and I complimented her upon it.  “Yes,” she replied, “my coffee is coffee.  De ’Merican beeble forgets de coffee wen dey makes it, and puts all water.  Oh, wishy-washy is ’Merican coffee.  It’s like peas and beans ground up.  De German beebles won’t drink de stuff.”

A generous repast of sausage, fresh pork, good bread, butter, and coffee, was placed before me, when the tailor returned with darkened brow, and rudely demanded the whereabouts of my boat.  “I looks everywhere,” he said, “and don’t finds de poat.  Hab you one poat, or hab you not?” I carefully described the exact location of the sneak-box in the rear of the tollgate-house, when he hastily disappeared.  The old lady and I had fully discussed the wishy-washy coffee question, when mine host returned.  This time he wore a pleasant countenance, and took me into his shop, where he introduced me to three of his apprentices.  At night I was given a bed in an unfinished attic, under a shingled roof, which was not even ceiled, so the constant draughts of air whistling through the interstices overhead and at the sides of my apartment, kept up a ventilation more perfect than was desirable; and I should have suffered from the cold had it not been for my German coverlet, which was a feather-bed about twenty inches in thickness.  It, of course, half smothered me, but there seemed no choice between that and freezing to death, so I patiently accepted my fate.

[A night under a German coverlet.]

CHAPTER V.

FROM CINCINNATI TO THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER

Cincinnati.—­ Music and pork in PORKOPOLIS.—­ The big bone Lick of
fossil elephants.—­ Colonel Croghan’s visit to the Lick.—­ Portage
around the “Falls,” At Louisville, Kentucky.—­ Stuck in the mud.—­ The
first steamboat of the west.—­ Victor Hugo on the situation.—­ A
FREEBOOTER’S den.—­ Whooping and sand-hill cranes.—­ The sneak-box
enters the Mississippi.—­