It was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we took our repast
in a quaint little room with a bed in it, decorated with some old
oil paintings, which in their time had probably done duty in a
Catholic chapel or monastery. The fare was very good, and served
with great cleanliness. The house was kept by a characteristic old
couple, with whom we had a long talk, and who were perhaps a very
good sample of that kind of people in the West.
The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow (not so very
old either, for he was but just turned sixty, I should think), who
had been out with the militia in the last war with England, and had
seen all kinds of service, - except a battle; and he had been very
near seeing that, he added: very near. He had all his life been
restless and locomotive, with an irresistible desire for change;
and was still the son of his old self: for if he had nothing to
keep him at home, he said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb
towards the window of the room in which the old lady sat, as we
stood talking in front of the house), he would clean up his musket,
and be off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one of the very many
descendants of Cain proper to this continent, who seem destined
from their birth to serve as pioneers in the great human army: who
gladly go on from year to year extending its outposts, and leaving
home after home behind them; and die at last, utterly regardless of
their graves being left thousands of miles behind, by the wandering
generation who succeed.
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