d about a dozen log-shanties made up
the village. Two of these structures were negro-cabins; two were small
groceries, in which the vilest alcoholic compounds were sold at a bit
(ten cents) a glass; one was a lawyer's office, in which was the
post-office, and a justice's court, where, once a month, the small
offenders of the vicinity 'settled up their accounts;' one was a
tailoring and clothing establishment, where breeches were patched at a
dime a stitch, and payment taken in tar and turpentine; and the rest
were private dwellings of one apartment, occupied by the grocers, the
tailor, the switch-tender, the post-master, and the negro _attaches_ of
the railroad. The church and the school-house--the first buildings to go
up in a Northern village, I have omitted to enumerate, because--they
were not there.

One of the natives told me that the lawyer was a 'stuck-up critter;' 'he
don't live; he don't--he puts-up at th' hotel.' And the hotel! Would
Shakspeare, had he known of it, have written of taking one's _ease_ at
his inn? It was a long, framed building, two stories in hight, with a
piazza extending across its side, and a front door crowded as closely
into one corner as the width of the joist would permit. Under the
piazza, ranged along the wall, was a low bench, occupied by about forty
tin wash-basins and water-pails, with coarse, dirty crash towels
suspended on rollers above them. By the side of each of these towels
hung a comb and a brush, to which a lock of every body's hair was
clinging, forming in the total a stock sufficient to establish any
barber in the wig business.

It was, as I have said, ten o'clock when we reached the station.
Throwing the bridles of our horses over the hitching-posts at the door,
we at once made our way to the bar-room. That apartment, which was in
the rear of the building, and communicated with by a long, narrow
passage, was filled almost to suffocation, when we entered, by a cloud
of tobacco-smoke, the fumes of bad whisky, and a crowd of drunken
chivalry, through whom the Colonel with great difficulty elbowed his way
to the counter, where 'mine host' and two assistants were dispensing
'liquid death,' at the rate of ten cents a glass, and of ten glasses a
minute.

'Hello, Colonel! how ar' ye?' cried the red-faced liquor-vender, as he
caught sight of my companion, and--relinquishing his lucrative
employment for a moment--took the Colonel's hand.

'Quite well, thank you, Miles,' said t