hitherto unaccounted for in time tables except by an asterisk, which means that trains stop every other Thursday on signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellow pine hotel by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir, for the wind was banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the weatherboarding and the chicken coop was right under the window. Me and Caligula dressed and went down-stairs. The landlord was shelling peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and Hongkong in complexion, though in other respects he seemed amenable in the exercise of his sentiments and features.
Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man, though red-haired and impatient of painfulness of any kind, speaks up.
“Pardner,” says he, “good-morning, and be darned to you. Would you mind telling us why we are at? We know the reason we are where, but can’t exactly figure out on account of at what place.”
“Well, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “I reckoned you-all would be inquiring this morning. You-all dropped off of the nine thirty train here last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smart in liquor. I can inform you that you are now in the town of Mountain Valley, in the State of Georgia.”
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