The landlord said: "All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel enough there for six." "But I don't like mackerel." "Oh--then help yourself to the mustard." In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, but there was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humor out of it.
Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle.
I tasted and smelt, and said I would take coffee, I believed.

The station-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless.

At last, when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes with himself upon a matter too vast to grasp: "Coffee! Well, if that don't go clean ahead of me, I'm d---d!" We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers and herdsmen--we all sat at the same board.

At least there was no conversation further than a single hurried request, now and then, from one employee to another.

It was always in the same form, and always gruffly friendly.