o greedily sought after at the present day.

THE STOUT GENTLEMAN.

A STAGE-COACH ROMANCE.

"I'll cross it, though it blast me!"

--_Hamlet_.

It was a rainy Sunday, in the gloomy month of November. I had been
detained, in the course of a journey, by a slight indisposition, from
which I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to
keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet
Sunday in a country inn!--whoever has had the luck to experience one
can alone judge of my situation.

The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for church
with a melancholy sound. I went to the windows, in quest of something
to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out
of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bed-room looked out
among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my
sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of
nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world, than a
stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw,
that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys. In one
corner was a stagnant pool of water, surrounding an island of muck;
there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart,
among which was a miserable, crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all
life and spirit; his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single
feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart
was a half-dozing cow chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be
rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide; a
wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his
spectral head out of the window, with the rain dripping on it from the
eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered
something every now and then, between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a
kitchen-wench tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in
pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; every thing, in
short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking
ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a
riotous noise over their liquor.

I was lonely and listless, and wanted amusement. My room soon became
insupportable. I abandoned it, and sought what is technically called
the travellers'-room. This is a public room set apart at most inns for
the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers