simultaneously with the ringing of a large dinner bell in the two hands
of a negro waiter, who, by certain gyrations of the bell was trying to
impart to his performance that picturesque elegance and harmony
which the instrument and its purpose lacked. For the refreshment thus
proclaimed was only the ordinary station dinner, protracted at Big
Flume for three quarters of an hour, to allow for the arrival of the
connecting mail from Sacramento, although the repast was of a nature
that seldom prevailed upon the traveler to linger the full period over
its details. The ordinary cravings of hunger were generally satisfied in
half an hour, and the remaining minutes were employed by the passengers
in drowning the memory of their meal in "drinks at the bar," in smoking,
and even in a hurried game of "old sledge," or dominoes. Yet to-day
the deserted table was still occupied by a belated traveler, and a
lady--separated by a wilderness of empty dishes--who had arrived after
the stage-coach. Observing which, the landlord, perhaps touched by
this unwonted appreciation of his fare, moved forward to give them his
personal attention.
He was a man, however, who seemed to be singularly deficient in those
supreme qualities which in the West have exalted the ability to "keep a
hotel" into a proverbial synonym for superexcellence. He had little or
no innovating genius, no trade devices, no assumption, no faculty for
advertisement, no progressiveness, and no "racket." He had the tolerant
good-humor of the Southwestern pioneer, to whom cyclones, famine,
drought, floods, pestilence, and savages were things to be accepted,
and whom disaster, if it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall. He
received the insults, complaints, and criticisms of hurried and hungry
passengers, the comments and threats of the Stage Company as he had
submitted to the aggressions of a stupid, unjust, but overruling
Nature--with unshaken calm. Perhaps herein lay his strength. People
were obliged to submit to him and his hotel as part of the unfinished
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