The convalescent

Front matter

I

THE CONVALESCENT.

BY vy

Letter I

Advantage of Evergreen Trees — Swapping Hats— Billy Babcock, the Centenarian—His Habits and Dress — His Memory of Washington — His Pension — Droll effect of meeting on the Road a given-away Suit of Old Clothes, etc., 13

Letter II. ^

Spontaneousness in Writing — An Adventure in Riding — Mounted at one time on a Horse and a Cow — A Story by a neighbor Fisherman — Catching a Snapping-turtle — Ward's Adventures — The Difficulties of Winter Pilotage of Steamboats, before the Railroad on the Hudson — Bald Eagle on the Ice, etc., etc 21

Letter III

Winter Diseases — Foliage in White, after a Light Snow — Capture of a 'Possum —Chase in the Snow, with Bare Legs — 'Possum's Habits when caught, etc. 83

Letter IV

The Highlands, with the Hudson frozen over — Difference of Scenery without Water — Sleigh-ride over the Ice — West Point— Cozzens's—Dell-Monell and Font-Anna— Tedium of Winter 89

Letter V

Use of Love for Dumb Animals — Quinty and his Doom — A stray Dog and his Habits — His death— Dog Insanity, etc 43

LETTER YI.

Poetry of Wild Animals in a Neighborhood— An Insane Wolf— His coming down from the Mountains to claim Hospitality — Visit to a Neighbor's to see his Remains— Tlie Irishman's reluctance to confessing having buried him — The dis-illusion and the '♦ Yaller Dog." 43 vi Contents.

Letter VII

Pilgrimage across the River — Two miles on the Ice — Polypus Island — Its Unsuspected Capabilities — Billy Babcock and his Hat — The Sonnet to the Hat, etc, etc 65

Letter VIII

Pleasure of doing a Thing for the First Time — Meeting of Politicians on the Road, bound to a Meeting — Asked to go and make a Speech — The Disadvantage of the Counsellor's handsome Boots — My Speech in Favor of dividing the County, etc., etc 61

Letter IX

Charm of Early Spring — Philosophy of Work as Overseer — Kindling Woods- Th'e Skunk and his Flesh and Habits — The Monument to the Czar— A curious Stump coming down with the Freshet — Quinty'a Fear of it, etc., etc 71

Letter X

Visit from Old Billy Babcock — His Breakfast and Memories — Billy's Dagnerreotype— Honoring Gift of a Coat to him— Sam B. Ruggles's Impulse, etc. etc. 80

Letter XI

Visit to a Valley Uninhabited — Johnny Kronk's Fisherman Hut — Hubbard tbe Boatman — Discovery of a Spring, and Naming it Font Anna — An Eagle — Pic- Nic in Dell-Monell— The Baptism by that Name — Snakes not found, etc.,. . 87

Letter XII

Rights of Boys — Natural Freedom of Chestnut-trees — A Chestnut- Saturday- Curious party of Strangers visiting Idlewild — Tying Horses to Trees in Private Grounds — Low Standard of general Politeness 94

Letter XIII

My Crumb-family of Winter-birds — The Kingfisher and Blue Jay — the Red Squirrel — A Quadruped Chicken — A Chicken half Duck — A Stuffed Bantam Hen — Interview between Stuffed Hen and Living Bantam Cock, Jake, etc. 100

Letter XIV

Late Freshet — Pond washed out and Boat gone — Death of two favorite Dogs — Charming Habits of the lost ones— Jake's other Name— His History etc.. lOT

Contents. vii

Letter XV

Letter to Morris about a previous Letter torn-up — Temptingness of the topic~ Pleasure of writing confidentially — Tired loolc at the Letter — Discontent with it — Tearing up — Reason why, and reconsideration — Irving's Abbotsford — Fragments of torn Letter re-gathered — Trip to Irvington — Breakfast with an old Friend in a same old place — Railway ride to Irvington — Wolfert's, dell — Mr. Grinnell's yacht, the " Haze " — Sunnyside and Mr. Irving, etc. etc 116

Letter XVI

Continuance of Letter to Morris descriptive of a Day with Washington Irving — Impression of his Appearance — Visit to his Library — His Desk and Blotting-sheet — Conversation for a half hour — Literary habits — Motley's "Dutch Republic"— Feeling as to his own New Books before they Avere reviewed — History of the first Conception of the Sketch-Book — Pictures on the Walls— The Grounds of Sunnyside — Comparison of Climates — Tulip-trees in triplets — Squirrels and two-legged Tree-destroyers— Humorous Reason for Growth of Trees — Incident at starting on our Drive to Sleepy Hollow, etc., etc 124

Letter XVII

Concluding Letter to Morris about the Visit to Mr. Irving — Protest against " Influence of the Air " of Sleepy Hollow — " Green Lane" character of the Road — No living Dutch Inhabitants to be seen— House of the Dutch Family who keep the Keys of the Hollow— Boyish Reminiscence of Mr. Irving's — Monument of Andre— Haunted Bridge of Logs — Brom Bone's Pumpkin — Character of Scenery— Oldest Church on the River— Family Tomb of the Irvings — Passing of Undercliff in the Rail-train — Philosophy of Mr. Irving's Charm of Personal Character and Manner, etc., etc 135

Letter XVIII

Containing a Curious Story of a Hard-run Squirrel and two Celebrated Editors 145

Letter XIX

Ancient Duty of Hospitality— Chance for it at Newbur.gh— The Boats up and down— Trip to Poughkeepsie — Passengers on the Day -boat— Missing the Down-boat— Adventures in Poughkeepsie— The splendid Straw Hat for a Sign, and its Eager Acquisition— A whole Child, etc., etc i 158 viii Contents.

Letter XX

Jake and Quinty once more — A Poem to Jake's Memory — The Dog the Undervalued of this Earth— De Trobriand's Obituary of Jake — Present of a new Dog from a Stranger— BeU'a getting him Home — Jerry's Character and his hatred of a Gentleman — Bianca Raventail and Kitty Grizzle — Dog Friendship and its Nature — Monody on Quinty, by a Distinguished Lady of Boston, etc. 165

Letter XXI

Bianca Raventairs behavior to a Wild-cat Cousin — A Secret too romantic to be kept — Bayard Taylor and our Friend the Judge— Taylor's Friendship and his fellow Traveller — His Letter — Description of his German Home — Offer of Capital to Taylor, by Col. Perkins of Boston— Romance of Taylor's Life, etc ISO

Letter XXII

Previous Account by Friend Sands — Seeing with different Eyes— The raised Leg of Massachusetts— His laid-off Garter and Slippers— Fossil of an Eden Day — Buzzard's Bay Physiognomy — Wood's Hole — The Yacht Azalia — Edgartown, and its Head Man Dr. Fisher— Indian Shell-currency of the Island — Extract from an old Book about Nantucket — Quaker Character of Buildings and of Scenery — Contrast between Quaker and Indian Names — Indian Legend and its Poetry— Quaker superiorities — Early and easy Marriages — Whale Oil Agility and Grace of Gait, etc., etc 19T

Letter XXIII

Gay Reception at Edgartown — Happy Exemption from the usual Penalty of the Voyage— Picnic Refreshment on the Voyage — Universal Temperance — Original Price of the Island of Nantucket — Quaker Exemptions from Common social Evils— Curious Chapter from an Old Book, about the •'Friends " of Nantucket, and their Manners and Customs — Specimen of the First-born Poetry of the Island, etc. etc 210

Letter XXIV

Arrival at Nantucket — Peculiar Vehicle of the Island — Ramble in the Town the first Evening — Disappointment in the Physiognomy of the Place— Visit to an Old Inhabitant— The Macy Family — Picture of the last Indian Native of the Island— His Pride about Shoes— Kadooda and his Laws — Band of Music — Curious Nantucket Predjudices, formerly, on the Subject, etc., etc 228

Contents. ix

Letter XXV

Mounting a Nantucket Steeple— Sensations in theBelfry— Curious Spanish Bell — Trip to 'Sconset— Funny Laws of the Place— Queer Poem — Arrival at the Arcadian Village — Hour on the Beach before Dinner— Sea-Mockery of Life's Story — Meeting with Ladies— Chowder-Time and Entrance to the Inn— The Manly Landlady — Excellent Dinner — Puppet-show of Whale-ships— Sharks on the Beach— WhittUng-Room— Philosophy of Whittling — Return to Nantucket, etc., etc 244

LETTHRXXYI. ^

A 'Sconset Acquaintance — A Talk with a Sea-Captain Forty Years after he was chewed up by a Whale — The Harpooning and the turn of the Angry Monster upon his Enemies — The Marks of his Four Teeth — The After-History of the Crushed Mouthful — Six days to Port — Arrival at Peru — The Emperor's Physician — The Back-Country Doctor — Captain Gardiner's Invention of a Tandem Hammock— Ride over the Mountains between two Mules — Recovery after Six Weeks — Command resumed and Voyage prosecuted — Important Considerations as to the American Whale Fishery, etc., etc 25T

Letter XXVII

Visit to the Light-house of Sancoty's Head — View of a Curious Lake — Suggestion as to a new Revenue for Nantucket — Aquatic Cow-yard to Milk the Whale— History of the first Whale ever captured — The Spermaceti Aristocrat of the Ocean — Process of Killing and Preparing— Poetry of Indian life

. on the Island— Recent Connection of Nantucket with the Mainland by Telegraph, etc., etc 266

Letter XXVIII

To Invalid Morris— Morning at Brady's — His Reason for moving further up Broadway — Photograph of Dana and its uses — Bancroft, Dr. Potts, Russell Lowell, etc — Likeness of Lord Napier — Description of "Imperial Photograph " — Comments on Photography and Portrait Painting— A true Likeness and its Injustice— Suggestion of an Inquiry for Artistic Philosophy, etc.. 281

Letter XXIX

To Morris at Mobile — Out-door Luxury of Southern Climate—" Tiff's Exchange " — Southern Noon-ing — New Orleans and its Chaotic Marvels — Shirt-sleeve Promenade — Recommendation to Transplant a New Orleans Fashion to Broadway — Invalid Advice — Caution as to Trifles, etc., etc 291

Contents.

Letter XXX

^Pleasure of having a Friend at a Distance — Trip to Town and first Call for Newest Gossip — Bridal Reception, and re-beautiful-ness of a Retired Widow — Omnibus-Drive down Broadway — Petticoats doing Penance — New Fashion of Coat-Collars — Throats dressed differently — Beards — Boots — Hats — Dinner at Dietz's-Mrs. Hatcli at the Tabernacle— Morris in Florida, etc., etc 299

Letter XXXIV

Ansv/er to many Inquiries — Corroboration of Experience -Mental Effect of Horseback-Riding — Unstableness of a Stable — Exercise with or without l''atigue — Insufficiency of Pedestrian Exercise — Philosophy of Uses of a Horse — Importance of the Use of a Saddle-Horse to Old Age — How much it affects Brain-work in all Professions — Advice to Convalescents, etc., etc 829

Letter XXXVII

Mouth made up for a Week's Feast on Physical Beauty— Journey to Springfield for the " Fair"— Miracles sold for cheap Tickets— Physiognomy of rural Massachusetts— Energetic improvement of Springfield Street and Houses — Male Passions for Horse-talk — Promotion of Horse-dignity at Springfield — Description of Races deferred, etc., etc 859

Contents. xi

Letter Xxxviii

Second Letter— Taking the Opportunity to looli through a 'Wiser Man's Eyes- Drive to the Hippodrome— Visits to the Horses in their Stalls— Company of Good Observers— Horse " Hard-Times " and his Card— Beauty of the Petersham Morgan— Style of the Black Horse, " Lone Star "—Suitableness of Horse to his Rider— Perfecting of the Quadruped and Deteriorating of the Biped- Need of Reformation in the Shape and Condition of American Man— One Exception, etc., etc 365

Letter XXXIX

The Hippodrome on the Second Day— The Trotting-match— The Aspect of the Ci owd on the Course— Ethan Allen and Hiram Drew— Philosophy of fast Trotting—Portrait of a famous Yankee Jockey— Cavalcade of Gentlemen's equipages— Lack of Style in American Driving— Society on Wheels and Beauty of a Park Drive — The Equestrian Cavalcade with Lady-riders— Unsuitableness of Crinoline to the Side-saddle, etc., etc 874

TRIP TO THE RAPPAHANNOCK.

LETTER I . Unceremonious Departure— The Journey South— Glimpse of the Susquehanna

Cloudless Welcome to Virginia — Digression to narrate a Story— Saw-Mill in

the Woods— A Hoist into the Air unexpectedly— The Miller and the Interior of his Hut— His Death, that Night— The Scene of his Laying-out— Who he was etc., etc ^'^^

Letter II

First Experience of eating a Persimmon— Suggestion as to Nature's Symbol for Secrecy— Chance for Cheap Living in " Ole Virginny "—Instance of Oblivious Life—What Good Blood may stagnate down to— Fight with the Guardian Dog— Interior of a Reduced Gentleman's Residence — Dried Apples produced—Mrs. X, as seen through her Dirt— Virginia Lack of Yankee Curiosity, otc. ••... 991

Letter III

Drive through the Pine Woods— An old Chapel— The Craves of the Family of Washington's Mother— Copy of an Epitaph— The Blind Preacher— Female seclusion in Virginia— Disappointment as to their Horses— Excellent way of hitching Horses— Tandem of Cows— Carelessness of personal appearance in Virginia Gentlemen— Mistaken impression of a Fellow-traveller, etc. . . 401 xii Contents.

LETTER IT.

Negro Happiness in Virginia — Persevering Politeness against Discouragement — Family's Slaves Moving West — Evening View of a Negro Cabin — Aunt Fanny, the Centenarian and the Black Baby— New kind of Negro Music — Pig-matins at Daylight — Chats with Negro Woodsmen — Virginia Supply of Black Walnut for Coffins — Adroit Negro Compliment — Family Graves on Plantation — Visit to the Hut of a Murderer's Widow 410

Letter V

Caught asleep — General Mint-julep before Breakfast — Virginian Refinements of good Eating — Reembarkation on the Rappahannock, for Fredericksburg — The River, along through King George County — Country-seats of the Carters, Tayloes and other well-known Names — Scene of George Washington's Boyhood — His Mother and her humble Cottage — His every-day Appearance and Character at Fredericksburg, when a Boy — Difference of the IBoy-ideal from that of a Man — A second Picture of the adolescent Washington, from sixteen to twenty — His first Visit to Belvoir and Intimacy with the Fairfaxes — Wish that a gifted Descendant of this Family would give us their Remembrances of Washington — Fredericksburg itself and its Tomb and Cliapel — Snow, and Journey across to the Potomac, etc., etc., etc., 419

Letter VI

Valley between the Potomac and Rappahannock — Washington's Frequent Ride across the " Neck of Virginia " — His Personal Appearance, when a Young Man — ^Young Washington the Surveyor — A Chance Tableau of Contrasted Fairfaxes ani Planters — The Young Englishman on Board the Boat, and our Virginia Captain — The Captain's Outer Man compared with his Passenger's —His New Invention — The Reading of his Application for a Patent — The Young Englislaman's Self-sacrifice for Friendship — Parting of the well-trimmed Plant of a London Gentleman, and the George Washington " Run to Seed," etc., etc. .. 437

Letter VII

Charm of the Number Seven — The Nile among Periodicals — Virginia Tea-table Peculiarity — Virginia Fashion of Ornamental Trees — Talk with a Physician About Intermittents and Negroes — Fever and Ague something of a Bugbear — Prescription — A Neglected Bird — Superiority of wild Geese to tame— Curious Restoration of a Virginia Church — Former and Present Standard of Manners — Mount Vernon from a Historical Point of View — Curious Document, etc., etc 447

THE CONVALESCENT.

L E T T E K I.

Advantage of Evergreen Trees — Swapping Hats— Billy Babcock, tlie Centenarian—His Habits and Dress — His Memory of Wasliington — His Pension — Droll effect of meeting on the Road a given-away Suit of Old Clothes, etc., etc.

January 7, 1855.

Weather to sit out of doors with a book! April is reconnoitering. And I never so much realized, as to-day (though I have recorded it before), the wisdom and luxury of a home buried in evergreen trees. Without the ice in the river, there would be no necessity of knowing that it is not summer. Every particle of snow gone from the fields and mountains, and a sun so warm, that to the children exercising out of doors, the full shade of our groves of hemlocks and cedars is welcome ! The farmer, about here, is bothered with the luxuriant pertinacity of these evergreens. He thinks of them as Bombastes thought of Fuzbos :

" He conquered all but Fuzbos — Fuzbos him ;"

but, to grounds cultivated for beauty, such prodigal growth of trees, wl^ose foliage recognizes no winter, are a wealth and a blessing. To-dav, we look out of open "windows, upon a summer of both trees and temperature.

I was called upon yesterday to remember an appeal to your patriotism, which I promised to make — you being a general and the object of appeal being a revolutionary soldier with whom I have lately swapped hats, with the underst-anding that your influence to procure him a pension was to be " thrown in." As the hat I got by my bargain is a relic, having been worn by a revolutionary head while crossinof from its first to its second centurv, and two years beyond the crossing, I must be excused for giving the history of " our trade " rather circumstantially — the hat being thus made authentic by having its story told, and the wearer being brought to your charitable notice, " as agreed."

My friend Torrey, the village blacksmith, had several times offered to " show me the beat" of the revolutionary soldier I visited and described in the Home Journal last summer. He declared that " old Babcock, up in the mountains," was " more of a cur'osity," for he could hold a stick in both hands and jump over it, at a hundred years old, and that was two years ago. He was " still full of fun and as sharp as a 'coon," though quite a vagrant in his habits, and going to and fro, between here and

Billy Babcock, the Centenarian. 15

Jersey, as he could find temporary work, or as lie took the whim. Five or six generations of his descendants were scattered along through the mountains (the old man counted them last at one hundred and sixty-five) but they were all poor, and he was still homeless and thriftless. His one steady idea seemed to be to get a pension, as he had served six years in the revolutionary army, and had been in the battle of Monmouth and the battle of Stony Point, and was wounded at Monmouth. The diflaculty lay in his having left, the army " without any writing to show for it," though he did it to work in the mountain-forge, back of West Point, where he was a journeyman when the war begun, and where he was sent for again, to help cast cannon balls for the army. I was interested in the story, as Torrey's hammer emphasized it on the heels of my mare, and promised to give the old man a kind welcome when he should come.

One bright morning, accordingly, his name was sent up to me. Torrey had been too busy to leave his shop, bnt another of my village cronies, Chatfield, the tanner, had undertaken to show the old man the way. He sat in the library, when I went in, directly under a btist of venerable Tasso — a closely-shaved and pinched-faced little old man, under a heavily-bearded old patriarch — and my first thought, I must own, was a wonder that so beautiful and needful a drapery, for the features of age, could ever be refused its natural growth and office. A veil of snowy white had been given by God to that little toothless mouth and to the stringy wrinkles of that repulsive chin and throat, and yet with the cost perpetual, and pains daily and vexatious, Nature's unceasing effort to put it on were resisted 1

"A bite and a glass of suramat" had preceded me, and my visitor was lively and talkative. His hearing and sight were apparently as good as ever, and in quickness of rgply he certainly excelled most men, young or old, of bis class of life. I began conversation rather jokingly, but be was soon "down upon me," as my neighbor said, "like a thousand of brick." Hilarity and imperturbable good-nature seemed to have constant possession of him. He had no reserves. Some allusion was made to his favorinof one lea: more than the other in his movements; and he ascribed it to a rheumatism, got by sleeping " out on the road the other night" (in November) "after a glass too much." He said he knocked at all the doors as he went along, and asked for a night's lodging, and they " passed him on " with their " no room, go to the next house !" till he was tired. So he lay down under a wall ; and " it wouldn't have hurt him, if it hadn't sprung up cohl in the night, and froze r In this homeless habit of wanderino-, as in the making of baskets, which is his resource, when he can find nothing better to do, he seemed to show gipsy blood.

The questions we naturally put to him concerning Gene-

Swapping Hats. IT

ral Washington (of whom he told us nothing except that he saw him every day for years), brought up the " pension " matter, and he stated his case — urging it much more strenuously when he found I had a General among my acquaintances. Seeing his hat, which he had thrown into the corner behind the door on entering the library, I took it up while he was talking, and inquired into its history. He had bought it in his ninety-ninth year, and worn it ever since — now three years. It had evidently been sat upon and slept upon, and used for the receiving and conveying away of potatoes and cold victuals — the shape long since gone, if it ever had one, and the band supplied by a piece of coarse twine. It was perhaps a " two shilling felt," to begin with ; but the honor it had had, in covering a head while it stepped into its second century, gave it a value — to say nothing of the wear-out it had received, upon a brain whose boyish recklessness and jollity a hundred years had failed to sober or make sorry ! Oh, I wanted that hat ! Stepping into the entry, I brought him my Idlewild broadbrim, with its spacious silk band — a hat, the first glance at which *' warranted the man to own a cow " — and proposed a " swap." It was amusing to see the cunning old chap assume a value for his hat immediately on finding it was wanted, and dodge all admission that he was making a good bargain. He only agreed, finally, on condition of my '* speaking to my friend the General about his pension.**

So never come to Idlewild, mj dear Morris, or venture to look at the old hat (which now surmounts the bust of John Quincj Adams in the hall), until yon have done your possible with the secretary of war, for Billy Babcock and his revolutionary claims.

But I was indebted to the old man, shortly after, for a sudden retrospect, which, I fear, I can hardly make interesting to you — the contrast and grotesqueness of k depending very much on the associations it awakened in my own memory. Driving to Newburgh in the afternoon, we met him, at a sudden turn of the road. He had been down with a load of baskets (eight miles, on foot), and was returning to the mountains — toddling jauntily along with his stick, but the mud and other signs showing that he had stopped to rest when quite too happy to mind where. He was dressed from head to foot in a suit of my own clothes which I had given him ; and though it was funny, of course, to see my coat and trowsers going to Newburgh with a load of baskets, and coming back " so," there was still, for me, a remoter reach of association in the spectacle. The suit chanced to be the sole memorial of that " dandyism " of twenty years ago, the pickled memory of which is still carefully preserved by my brother editors, and used for the acid to their criticisms. Both coat and trowsers were of London make, in 1836 — relics that had seen a deal of sly wear as old clothes in my rainy-day

A Suit of Old Clothes. 19

wood-choppings and brook-clearings, but the fancy cut and decoration of which had hitherto prevented their being given away. There was as much fun as anything else in bestowing them upon the ragged and merry old basketmaker. But, by dint of long keeping and tumbling over, they had insensibly become the furniture of my remembrance of gay life in London ; and to meet them now, suddenlj^, on the road, zig-zag-ing about on legs and arms a hundred years old, and bound to finish their career in unhoused dirt and vicissitude — there was a mingled drollery and contradictoriness in the confused impression, which made me both lauo-h and sfrow thouo-htful. If there must be reappearances of one's coats and trowsers, it would be pleasanter to see them in their cleanly and decent wont — not spattered with mud while they are honored by longei wear — and if I had foreseen the venerableness of these after-walks of mine, I certainly should have selected the pantaloons of a plainer period. You see my old-clothes moral, I hope.

My friend, the merry centenarian, has called on me once since. He was finding it too cold in the mountains, and was going over into Jersey for the winter. My velvet facings and silk braids had proved good material for " swap," and he had parted with all of my toggery except the hat — the pillow-and-cushion duties of this last, however, having rendered its previous history a matter of pure faith. He was as blithe and quick-witted as ever, and his gaiety — patriarch as he is — was positively infectious. It is the elixir of his unfailing vitality, I am certain. He has no idea of dying, and is " coming round in the spring, to see if that General has got his pension fixed." So keep the matter in mind.

We have had another strange visitor here — but my letter is long enough for these short days. Adieu.

P.S. Jan. 1 0. — Let me record that two steamboats passed down the river yesterday, and a sloop to-day, though the ice, which has suddenly vanished with the rain, has been dotted with skaters for a month.

LETTER II.

Spontaneousness in Writing— An Adventure in Riding— Mounted at one time on a Horse and a Cow — A Story by a neighbor Fisherman — Catching a Snapping-turtle— Ward's Adventures— The Difficulties of Winter Pilotage of Steamboats, before the Railroad on the Hudson— Bald Eagle on the Ice, etc., etc.

January 2*7, 18o5.

"New events and fresh information are raore interesting than essay- writing, I believe, even if the events are small and the information homely. It is this supposition (with an eye only to the preference of our readers, and the probability of interesting them) which, week after week, makes me throw aside a first half-page of a speculating or criticising " leader," and fall to describing, instead, some new phase of my every-day life in the country. I am ready to cease being thus autobiographic, when the new incidents and fresh information give out. I never send you one of those homespun letters, in fact, without quite a persuasion that it will be the last. But life always seems to ke^p new, somehow ; and a present hour always seems to me worth any two of the past or the future. "Yours to command," however. My hope of interesting, is by making this column differ, in case of its failing to excel. I will go oftener to town, and ride in omnibuses and dissipate at parties, whenever those rides are more amusing (say) than the one I describe to-day, or whenever city brains are better worth borrowing from than the brains of our country droppers in — such (say) as my friend the fisherman's, of whose water-life on the Hudson, as he gossipped it over our blazing wood-fire last evening, I will jot down an item or two while I remember it.

And now to my hobnail commonplaces — more sure of a pleasant understanding after this " strictly confidential " apology

You may wonder how a zeal in our common service, should add to my experiences the new sensation of being mounted upon a cow! But this, and a ride upon a camel in Asia Minor, are two of this planet's possible emotions with which I shall not pass to another star unacquainted. It was a trifle of a surprise — coming as it did after that hardest day of in-door drudgery which least prepares one for perilous adventure. You know my weekly crisis, the Thursday evening's mail — closing at Newburgh at six, and inevitably to be reached, storm or starlight, by the " final copy for the printer." I had scribbled, up to the last moment, as usual, hopped into the saddle at dusk, gallopped the four miles rather nervously for fear of missing the inexorable bag, reached it, and was trotting leisurely home. Tt was a cloudy night — dark as half-past six had

An Adventure in Riding. 23

ever the liberty to be — when I reached the covered bridge across the mouth of the Moodna.

The small and single lamp, usually making darkness visible at the far end of this rickety old tunnel, was not yet lit. The outline of an entrance, under an arch of hopeless black, was all I could distinguish — a promise of emergence to light on the other side, which required the faith of a gimlet. My horse took a sniff of suspicion, and half bolted ; and as he had thrown me over his head a week or two before, and that was my first experience as a one-horse missile, I hesitated a second before putting on the compulsion. In went both heels, however — for it was a bitter cold night, and my lungs are not the customers for winter air without exercise — and in spi'ung Sir Archy upon the unseen planks, I loosed the rein — instinct being more to be trusted than reason (I have always observed) in " feeling one's way." The smothered sound of the hoofs upon the never-swept carpet of lumber-dust and manure, came down in stifled echoes fi'om the roof. Paff ! patFl paff ! — which side we should bang against, and what hole of the remembered short planks my dancing animal would back into in rearing, I could only guess. A sudden plunge I Half a leap to go over something — but the twitched curb (with the flash across my mind that it was the warped flooring out of place) balked the eflfort, and the next moment we rose into the air — to explanatory music I