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."
"On top of that," says Caligula, "don't say that we can't have
anything to eat."
"Sit down, gentlemen," says the landlord, "and in twenty minutes I'll
call you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere in town."
That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a
yellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and
flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets
out a dish of the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so
me and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food that
enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearly
four years at a stretch.
"The wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boys
didn't chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay.
It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!"
"Hog and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this section."
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