itably entreated and
transmitted to the breakfast-table next morning in perfect sight-seeing
trim; only the Anakim was cross, and muttered that they had sent him
out in the village to sleep among the hens, and there was a cackling
and screaming and chopping off of heads all night long. But the
breakfast-table assured us that many a cackle must have been the
swan-song of death. Halicarnassus wondered if something might not be
invented to consume superfluous noise, as great factories consume their
own smoke, but the Anakim said there was no call for any new invention
in that line so long as Halicarnassus continued in his present
appetite,--with a significant glance at the plump chicken which the
latter was vigorously converting into mammalia, and which probably was
the very one that disturbed the Anakim's repose. And then we discussed
the day's plan of operations. Halicarnassus said he had been
diplomatizing for a carriage. The man in the office told him he could
have one for five dollars. He thought that was rather high. Man said
it was the regular price; couldn't get one for any less in the city.
Halicarnassus went out and saw one standing idle in the market-place.
Asked the price. Three dollars. For how long? Drive you all round the
city, Sir; see all the sights. Then he went back and told the man at
the office.

"Well," I said, after he had swallowed a wassail-bowl of coffee, and
showed no disposition to go on, "what did you do then?"

"Came in to breakfast."

"Didn't you tell the clerk you would not take his carriage?"

"No."

"Didn't you tell the other man you would take his?"

"No."

"What DID you do?"

"Let it work. Don't be in a hurry. Give a thing time to work."

"And suppose it should work you out of any carriage at all?"

"No danger." And to be sure, when we had finished breakfast, the
three-dollar hack was there awaiting our pleasure. Our pleasure was to
drive out into the British possessions, first around the mountain,
which is quite a mountain for a villa, though nothing to speak of as a
mountain, with several handsome residences on its sides, and a good
many not so handsome; but the mountain is a pet of Montreal, and, as I
said, quite the thing for a cockney mountain. Then we went to the
French Cathedral, which is, I believe, the great gun of ecclesiastical
North America, but it hung fire with me. It was large, but not great.
There was no unity. It was not impressive. It was runn