xperience of the proceedings of any sort of
vehicle that goes on wheels. Still, the day was beautiful, the air
delicious, and we were _alone_; with no tobacco-spittle, or eternal
prosy conversation about dollars and politics (the only two subjects
they ever converse about, or can converse upon), to bore us. We really
enjoyed it; made a joke of the being knocked about; and were quite
merry. At two o'clock we stopped in the wood to open our hamper and
dine; and we drank to our darlings and all friends at home. Then we
started again and went on until ten o'clock at night: when we reached a
place called Lower Sandusky, sixty-two miles from our starting-point.
The last three hours of the journey were not very pleasant; for it
lightened--awfully: every flash very vivid, very blue, and very long;
and, the wood being so dense that the branches on _either_ side of the
track rattled and broke _against_ the coach, it was rather a dangerous
neighborhood for a thunder-storm.

"The inn at which we halted was a rough log house. The people were all
abed, and we had to knock them up. We had the queerest sleeping-room,
with two doors, one opposite the other; both opening directly on the
wild black country, and neither having any lock or bolt. The effect of
these opposite doors was, that one was always blowing the other open: an
ingenuity in the art of building, which I don't remember to have met
with before. You should have seen me, in my shirt, blockading them with
portmanteaus, and desperately endeavoring to make the room tidy! But the
blockading was really needful, for in my dressing-case I have about
250_l._ in gold; and for the amount of the middle figure in that scarce
metal there are not a few men in the West who would murder their
fathers. Apropos of this golden store, consider at your leisure the
strange state of things in this country. It has _no money_; really no
money. The bank-paper won't pass; the newspapers are full of
advertisements from tradesmen who sell by barter; and American gold is
not to be had, or purchased. I bought sovereigns, English sovereigns, at
first; but as I could get none of them at Cincinnati, to this day, I
have had to purchase French gold; 20-franc pieces; with which I am
traveling as if I were in Paris!

"But let's go back to Lower Sandusky. Mr. Q. went to bed up in the roof
of the log house somewhere, but was so beset by bugs that he got up
after an hour and _lay in the coach_, . . . where he was o