and these were
followed by a detachment of brown-crested hoecakes--the peculiar
favorite of the province; an abundance of rich milk, eggs, butter, and
other rural knicknackeries, such as no hungry man ever surveys with
indifference. These were successively deposited upon a homespun table
cloth, whose whiteness rivalled the new snow, with an accuracy of
adjustment that, by its delay, produced the most visible effects upon
the sergeant, who, during the spreading of the board, sat silently by,
watching, with an eager and gloating earnestness, the slow process, ever
and anon uttering a short hem, and turning about restlessly on his
chair.

I may pause here, after the fashion of our worthy friend Horse Shoe, to
make an observation. There is nothing that works so kindly upon the
imagination of a traveller, if he be in any doubt as to his appetite, as
the display of such a table. My particularity of detail, on the present
occasion, will, therefore, be excused by my reader, when I inform him
that Butler had arrived at the inn in that depressed tone of spirits
which seemed to defy refreshment; and that, notwithstanding this
impediment, he played no insignificant part afterwards at supper; a
circumstance mainly attributable to that gentle but irresistible
solicitation, which the actual sight and fragrance of the board
addressed to his dormant physical susceptibility. I might, indeed, have
pretermitted the supper altogether, were there not a philosophical truth
at the bottom of the matter, worthy of the notice of the speculative and
curious reader; namely, that where a man's heart is a little teased with
love, and his temper fretted by crossings, and his body jolted by
travel; especially, when he has been wandering through the night air,
with owls hooting in his ears; and a thin drapery of melancholy has been
flung, like cobwebs, across his spirits, then it is my doctrine, that a
clean table, a good-humored landlady and an odorous steaming-up of good
things, in a snug, cheerful little parlor, are certain to beget in him a
complete change of mood, and to give him, instead, a happy train of
thoughts and a hearty relish for his food. Such was precisely Butler's
condition.

He and the sergeant now sat down at the table, and each drew the
attention of the other by the unexpected vigor of their assaults upon
the dainties before them; Robinson surprised to find the major so
suddenly revived, and Butler no less unprepared to see a man,