rnoon, so as to
get over the break-neck track before dark. Old Bell[O] welcomed us as
usual with his honey, brandy, and water. He then prepared us some
dinner, as we wished to snatch a few hours' sleep before commencing our
return to Louisville, with its twenty-one hours of pleasure. About
half-past ten at night, a blast in the breeze, mixed with a confused
slushy sound, as sixteen hoofs plashed in the mud, rang the knell in our
ears, "Your time has come!" I anxiously looked as the mail pulled up in
the middle of the road opposite to the door--they always allow the
passengers the privilege of wading through the mud to the door of the
inn--to see if by any chance it was empty, having been told that but few
people comparatively travelled the back route--no wonder, if they could
help it. Alas! the steam on the window announced, with fatal certainty,
some humanities inside. The door opened; out they came, one, two, three,
four. It was a small coach, with three seats, having only space for two
persons on each, thus leaving places inside for my friend and myself.
"Any room outside, there?"

"Room for one, sir!"

There was no help for it, and we were therefore obliged to leave one
servant behind, to follow next night.

Horses changed, honey-toddy all drank, in we got into the centre seat.
"What is this all round?" "Thick drugget, sir; they nail it round in
winter to keep the cold out."--Thank Heaven, it is only nailed at the
bottom. Suffocation began; down goes my window. Presently a
sixteen-stone kind of overgrown Pickwickian "Fat Boy," sitting opposite
me, exclaims aloud, with a polar shudder, "Ugh! it's very cold!" and
finding I was inattentive, he added, "Don't you find it very cold?" "Me,
sir? I'm nearly fainting from heat," I replied; and then, in charity, I
lent him a heavy full-sized Inverness plaid, in which he speedily
enveloped his fat carcass. What with the plaids, and his five inches
deep of fat, his bones must have been in a vapour bath. The other
_vis-a-vis_ was a source of uneasiness to me on a different score. He
kept up a perpetual expectorating discharge; and, as my open window
was the only outlet, and it did not come that way, I naturally felt
anxious for my clothes. Daylight gradually dawned upon the scene, and
then the ingenuity of my friend was made manifest in a way calculated to
move any stomach not hardened by American travelling. Whenever he had
expressed the maximum quantity of juice from the tob