the sod-roof. The tavern was not over ten feet high at the apex of the
roof; it had been built for two or three years, and the grass was now
growing on top. A red-shirted publican sallied out of this artificial
grotto, and invited the ladies and gentlemen to dinner.

It appeared, from a beautifully-engraved map hanging on the walls of the
Sod Tavern, that this earthly tabernacle stood in the midst of an ideal
town. The map had probably been constructed by a poet, for it was quite
superior to the limitations of sense and matter-of-fact. According to the
map, this solitary burrow was surrounded by Seminary, Depôt, Court-House,
Woolen Factory, and a variety of other potential institutions, which
composed the flourishing city of New Cincinnati. But the map was meant
chiefly for Eastern circulation.

Charlton's dietetic theories were put to the severest test at the table.
He had a good appetite. A ride in the open air in Minnesota is apt to
make one hungry. But the first thing that disgusted Mr. Charlton was the
coffee, already poured out, and steaming under his nose. He hated coffee
because he liked it; and the look of disgust with which he shoved it away
was the exact measure of his physical craving for it. The solid food on
the table consisted of waterlogged potatoes, half-baked salt-rising
bread, and salt-pork. Now, young Charlton was a reader of the _Water-Cure
Journal_ of that day, and despised meat of all things, and of all meat
despised swine's flesh, as not even fit for Jews; and of all forms of
hog, hated fat salt-pork as poisonously indigestible. So with a dyspeptic
self-consciousness he rejected the pork, picked off the periphery of the
bread near the crust, cautiously avoiding the dough-bogs in the middle;
but then he revenged himself by falling furiously upon the aquatic
potatoes, out of which most of the nutriment had been soaked.