: time enough for the comfortable discussion of breakfast, for the
changing of raiment among the babies, for chatting in the bar-room, for
the interchange of news among the men, and

even for glasses of milk-punch. Tell it not in modern Gath that
even the Dominie spiced his half-mug of flip with an anecdote, and that
every man and woman took cider as well as coffee. How can I describe the
events and vicissitudes that befell us during this journey of three days
and a half to New York? Modern travellers, who are, or are not, as it
happens, run off the track, smashed
up, or otherwise suddenly and summarily disposed of, have little notion
of our successive and amusing accidents, and of how they diversified and
occupied the mind, so as entirely to preclude
the _ennui_ which comes from railroad-travelling, with its ninety-nine
chances of safety to one of accident. That we were tipped out
and over repeatedly,--that one of the leaders had fits, (which amiable
weakness was understood and allowed for by our driver, who was in hopes
the critter wouldn't have 'em that day,)--that the coach
wholly collapsed
once, letting all the patient passengers into a promiscuous heap of
unbroken bones,--this, and

such as this, will be easily believed by any New-England
traveller
who remembers thirty years back. But how we fell so softly that
the brains were never damaged,--why falling into ditches at night wasn't
an unhealthy process,--and, above all, how the driver's stock of
leathern
straps, strings, and nails should always prove
exhaustless, and be always so wonder