ed for a long distance by horses and wagons drawn up by the
way-side. Surprisingly few persons in the country, at this day, are seen
on horseback. Notwithstanding the vast difference in the amount of the
population, ten horsemen were to be met with forty years ago, by all
accounts, on the highways of the State, for one to-day. The well-known
vehicle, called a dearborn, with its four light wheels and mere shell of
a box, is in such general use as to have superseded almost every other
species of conveyance. Coaches and chariots are no longer met with,
except in the towns; and even the coachee, the English sociable, which
was once so common, has very generally given way to a sort of
carriage-wagon, that seems a very general favourite. My grandmother, who
did use the stately-looking and elegant chariot in town, had nothing but
this carriage-wagon in the country; and I question if one-half of the
population of the State would know what to call the former vehicle, if
they should see it.

As a matter of course, the collection of people assembled at Little Nest
on this occasion had been brought together in dearborns, of which there
must have been between two and three hundred lining the fences and
crowding the horse-sheds of the two inns. The American countryman, in
the true sense of the word, is still quite rustic in many of his
notions; though, on the whole, less marked in this particular than his
European counterpart. As the rule, he has yet to learn that the little
liberties which are tolerated in a thinly-peopled district, and which
are of no great moment when put in practice under such circumstances,
become oppressive and offensive when reverted to in places of much
resort. The habits of popular control, too, come to aid in making them
fancy that what everybody does in their part of the country can have no
great harm in it. It was in conformity with this _tendency_ of the
institutions, perhaps, that very many of the vehicles I have named were
thrust into improper places, stopping up the footways, impeding the
entrances to doors, here and there letting down bars without permission,
and garnishing orchards and pastures with one-horse wagons. Nothing was
meant by all these liberties beyond a desire to dispose of the horses
and vehicles in the manner easiest to their owners. Nevertheless, there
was some connection between the institutions and these little liberties
which some statesmen might fancy existed in the _spirit_ of th