tempered blade. It was a face that suggested a history, and many
histories, but whose scene would have been in courts and camps. At this
moment their circles are dull for want of that life which is waning
unexcited in this solitary recess.

The master of the house proposed to show us a "short cut," by which we
might, to especial advantage, pursue our journey. This proved to be
almost perpendicular down a hill, studded with young trees and stumps.
From these he proposed, with a hospitality of service worthy an
Oriental, to free our wheels whenever they should get entangled, also,
to be himself the drag, to prevent our too rapid descent. Such
generosity deserved trust; however, we women could not be persuaded to
render it. We got out and admired, from afar, the process. Left by our
guide--and prop! we found ourselves in a wide field, where, by playful
quips and turns, an endless "creek," seemed to divert itself with our
attempts to cross it. Failing in this, the next best was to whirl down a
steep bank, which feat our charioteer performed with an air not unlike
that of Rhesus, had he but been as suitably furnished with chariot and
steeds!

At last, after wasting some two or three hours on the "short cut," we
got out by following an Indian trail,--Black Hawk's! How fair the scene
through which it led! How could they let themselves be conquered, with
such a country to fight for!

Afterwards, in the wide prairie, we saw a lively picture of nonchalance,
(to speak in the fashion of dear Ireland.) There, in the wide sunny
field, with neither tree nor umbrella above his head, sat a pedler, with
his pack, waiting apparently for customers. He was not disappointed. We
bought, what hold in regard to the human world, as unmarked, as
mysterious, and as important an existence, as the infusoria to the
natural, to wit, pins. This incident would have delighted those modern
sages, who, in imitation of the sitting philosophers of ancient Ind,
prefer silence to speech, waiting to going, and scornfully smile in
answer to the motions of earnest life,

"Of itself will nothing come,
That ye must still be seeking?"

However, it seemed to me to-day, as formerly on these sublime occasions,
obvious that nothing would come, unless something would go; now, if we
had been as sublimely still as the pedler, his pins would have tarried
in the pack, and his pockets sustained an aching void of pence!

Passing through