There We See A Bright-Eyed, Pretty Little Maiden, Who Wears A Gay Red
Handkerchief In Place Of A Hat, And Makes A Picture As She Drives Her
Cow Over A Bit Of Moorland.
Driver says she is "one of the French
people", and that her name is Thibaudia, which, with its English
signification (a kind of heath), seems appropriate for one living in
the wilds, and deliciously foreign and suggestive.
We wonder if old
Crumplehorn understands French, and conclude that she is a well educated
animal, as she seems to obey directions without needing a touch of
willow branch to punctuate them.
Sometimes it seems that the names conferred
On mortals at baptism in this queer world
Seem given for naught but to spite 'em.
Mr. Long is short, Mr. Short is tall,
And who so meek as Mr. Maul?
Mr. Lamb's fierce temper is very well known,
Mr. Hope plods about with sigh and groan, -
"And so proceed ad infinitum"
At one point on our route, when we are passing through a lonely and
apparently uninhabited region, our jolly driver, "Manyul", remarks,
"Here's where Nobody lives."; and one replies, "Yes, evidently; and I
shouldn't think any one would wish to." But a turn of the road brings a
house in sight; and driver says, "That's his house, and his name is
actually Nobody" (Charles, I believe). We quote, "What's in a name!"
and conclude that if he is at all like the kindly people of this region
whom we have met he may be well content to be nobody, rather than
resemble many whom the world considers "somebodies", but who are not
models in any respect.
Our driver is quite a character in his way, and in the winter he "goes
a loggin'". On learning this we ply him with questions in such manner as
would surprise a lawyer, eliciting in return graphic pictures of camp
life in New Brunswick wildernesses, and the amusements with which they
while away the long evenings in their rough barracks. He describes
their primitive modes of cooking, their beds of fragrant spruce boughs
overlaid with straw, - "Better 'n any o' your spring mattresses, I tell
you!" - the queer box-like bunks along the wall where they "stow
themselves away", and where the most active and useful man is, for the
time at least, literally laid on the shelf.
Octavius, thinking how much he would enjoy "roughing it" thus, asks
what they would charge to take a young man to board in camp; and driver
indignantly replies, "Nothin'! Do you suppose we'd charge board? No,
indeed! Just let him come; and if we didn't give him a good time, and
if he didn't get strong and hearty, then we'd be ashamed of ourselves
and sell out."
Here we approach a cove which driver calls the Joggin (as it makes a cut
or jog-in, we presume); and beyond, a wide arm of the Basin is spanned
by a rickety old bridge, at least a quarter of a mile long, named in
honor of her Majesty, - hardly a compliment to that sovereign, we think.
The boards are apparently laid down without nails, and rattle like a
fusillade as our vehicle rolls over them.
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