out wench at a back door stands gazing with her arms a-kimbo. The
horn rattles back into its socket again; the lines are tightened, and
the long lash smacks once more around the reeking flanks of the leaders.
Yonder, in his sooty shop, stands the smith, keeping up with his elbow a
lazy sway upon his bellows, while he looks admiringly over coach and
team, and gives an inquisitive glance at the nigh leader's foot, that
he shod only yesterday. A flock of geese, startled from a mud-puddle
through which the coach dashes on, rush away with outstretched necks,
and wings at their widest, and a great uproar of gabble. Two
school-girls--home for the nooning--are idling over a gateway, half
swinging, half musing, gazing intently. There is a gambrel-roofed
mansion, with a balustrade along its upper pitch, and quaint ogees of
ancient joinery over the hall-door; and through the cleanly scrubbed
parlor-windows is to be seen a prim dame, who turns one spectacled
glance upon the passing coach, and then resumes her sewing. There are
red houses, with their corners and barge-boards dressed off with white,
and on the door-step of one a green tub that flames with a great pink
hydrangea. Scattered along the way are huge ashes, sycamores, elms, in
somewhat devious line; and from a pendent bough of one of these last a
trio of school-boys are seeking to beat down the swaying nest of an
oriole with a convergent fire of pebbles.

The coach flounders on,--past an old house with stone chimney, (on which
an old date stands coarsely cut,) and with front door divided down its
middle, with a huge brazen knocker upon its right half,--with two St.
Luke's crosses in its lower panels, and two diamond-shaped "lights"
above. Hereabout the street widens into what seems a common; and not far
below, sitting squarely and authoritatively in the middle of the common,
is the red-roofed meeting-house, with tall spire, and in its shadow the
humble belfry of the town academy. Opposite these there comes into the
main street a highway from the east; and upon one of the corners thus
formed stands the Eagle Tavern, its sign creaking appetizingly on a
branch of an overhanging sycamore, under which the stage-coach dashes up
to the tavern-door, to unlade its passengers for dinner, and to find a
fresh relay of horses.

Upon the opposite corner is the country store of Abner Tew, Esq.,
postmaster during the successive administrations of Mr. Madison and Mr.
Monroe. He comes out