momentarily propelled
it stronger; and the long-parched ground seethed and smoked like a
heated caldron.

Pleasant this, was reflection number one, as I endeavoured to peer
through the mist, and beheld a haze of weeping foliage--pleasant to be
immured here during Heaven knows how many days, without the power to
escape. Lucky fellow, Arthur, was my second thought; capital quarters
you have fallen into. Better far the snug comforts of a Flemish chateau
than the chances of a wayside inn. Besides, here is a goodly company met
together; there will needs be pleasant people among them. I wish it
may rain these three weeks; chateau life is the very thing I 'm curious
about. How do they get through the day? There's no _Times_ in Flanders;
no one cares a farthing about who's in and who's out. There's no Derby,
no trials for murder. What can they do? was the question I put to myself
a dozen times over. No matter; I have abundant occupation; my journal
has never been posted up since--since--alas, I can scarcely tell!

It might be from reflections like these, or perhaps because I was less
of a sportsman than my companions, but certainly, whatever the cause,
I bore up against the disappointment of the weather with far more
philosophy than they, and dispersed a sack of proverbs about patience,
hope, equanimity, and contentment which Sancho Panza himself might have
envied, until at length no one ventured a malediction on the day in my
presence, for fear of eliciting a hailstorm of moral reflections. The
company dropped down to breakfast by detachments, the elated looks
and flashing eyes of the night before saddened and overcast at the
unexpected change. Even the elders of the party seemed discontented;
and except myself and an old gentleman with the gout, who took an
airing about the hall and the drawing-room in a wheel-chair, all seemed
miserable.

Each window had its occupant posted against the glass, vainly
endeavouring to catch one bit of blue amid the dreary waste of cloud. A
little group, sulky and silent, were gathered around the weather-glass;
a literary inquirer sat down to con over the predictions of the almanac.
You might as well have looked for sociability among the inhabitants of a
private madhouse as here. The weather was cursed in every language from
Cherokee to Sanskrit; all agreed that no country had such an abominable
climate. The Yankee praised the summers of America, the Dane upheld his
own, and I took a patriot