Morning journal and courier., 1884-01-30
The Lunch Counter.
As Viewed From Texas Standpoint by
 A Victim.

l As Viewed From A Texas Standpoint by Victim.
 From the Texas Siftirgs
 Of all the pernicious institutions of this country the railroad lunch-counter is the most noxious pestiferous and infamous It has not kept up with the march of progress nor advanced with the improvement of the age. Ysu always approach 8 lunch-counter, especially if it is one you have never visited before, with hope, and you leave it with despair. As you climb upon high stool and stick your elbows in lump of grease on the counter you are cheered by the sight of the
 gliatering nickel plated cofee-urn, and 8
 feeling of sanguine expectancy creeps over
 your inside as your eye ranges over the cards
 hanging behind the counter, which read:
 Turkey, 10 cents; coffee, 10 cents; lamb
 chops, 15 cents; pies of all kinds, 10 cents;
 oysters, every style, 15 cents; &o. The
 man who waits on you wears dirty apron
 and sad, tired-of-life-and-o of dishing-out-
 pies and coffee expression of countenance.
 When you attract his attention and give him
 your order he goes off with great enthusiasm
 to get it, but he is stopped by the hungry
 mortals all along the line of the counter, who
 cIamor for various articles of food. He
 dashes dab of butter on 8 little plate at the
 man i'll the linen duster, jams an empty plate
 under the nose of tho red-faced man with
 the cinder in his eye, throws a plate of
 doughnuts to the drummer who is trying to
 suppress his ravenous appetite with pickles,
 fills the brakeman's order for glass of cold
 tea and 10-cent chunk of custard pie, and
 filings ham sandwich at the sleeping car
 porter, who carries it off to gnaw it at his
 leisure in the retirement of the sleeping-car
 dressing room. Then there is 8 clash of
 plates and glasses and of knives and forks
 that turn around in their handles, and the
 sad-eyed miscreant brings you the coffee and
 turkey with take-it or ieave-it just-as-you |--please sir. Before he comes back with
 the salt and mustard an interval eapses dur
 ing which be serves seven more hungry pas sengers, and dives into an ante room where he seems. to you, to rest five or six minutes. You feel that your system demands bread. You imagine that the fifteen minutes for refreshments'' are about up, and in despera- ton, you load your internal economy with in digestible doughnuts, because you are afraid to wait for the bread, and you scald the lining of the roof of your mouth with the hot, gritty fluid called coffee. Everything is gritty and tastes of coal-dust, and you feel uncom fortable and unclean and you wish you were dead. Then you pay the caitif behind the counter 50 cents, and you wish you were dead some more while you rush out thinking that the train is moving of, but you find that you have only been pampering your appetite 1 in the banqueting hall for five minutes, and
 that you have yet ten minutes to spare, and | you go back to the lunch counter and buy two cigars for quarter As the train pulls l out and goes laundering past farm-houses, where you know stacks of home made pies, piles of deky biscuits, churns full of 1 hilarious buttermiik, and tables grooming l with yellow-iegged chickens and mealy Irish potatoes. you curse the railroads that allo v l the grasping, hydra-headed and smoke-be- grimmed lunch stand monopoly to exist. and l by that time your t"o fora quarter cigar be- 1 gins to swell up in the middle and fray at the edges. You, out of consideration for the I feelings of the other passengers, leave the l smoking car and finish the cigar on the rear platform, where the winds carry the 12 1-2 cent effiuvia out into the adjacent settlements f and make the honest granger think that the cholera has come at last.