The baby prevails. The
stage company comes to a compromise, the woman dismounts, and we are
off, away from the white houses, over the sandy road, out upon a
hilly and not cheerful country. And the driver begins to tell us
stories of winter hardships, drifted highways, a land buried in snow,
and great peril to men and cattle.
III
"It was then summer, and the weather very fine; so pleased was I with
the country, in which I had never travelled before, that my delight
proved equal to my wonder." - BENVENUTO CELLINI.
There are few pleasures in life equal to that of riding on the
box-seat of a stagecoach, through a country unknown to you and
hearing the driver talk about his horses. We made the intimate
acquaintance of twelve horses on that day's ride, and learned the
peculiar disposition and traits of each one of them, their ambition
of display, their sensitiveness to praise or blame, their
faithfulness, their playfulness, the readiness with which they
yielded to kind treatment, their daintiness about food and lodging.
May I never forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the
third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish,
mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could see
that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head
about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up
"in any simple knot," - like the back hair of Shelley's Beatrice
Cenci. How she ambled and sidled and plumed herself, and now and
then let fly her little heels high in air in mere excess of larkish
feeling.
"So! girl; so! Kitty," murmurs the driver in the softest tones of
admiration; "she don't mean anything by it, she's just like a
kitten."
But the heels keep flying above the traces, and by and by the driver
is obliged to "speak hash" to the beauty. The reproof of the
displeased tone is evidently felt, for she settles at once to her
work, showing perhaps a little impatience, jerking her head up and
down, and protesting by her nimble movements against the more
deliberate trot of her companion. I believe that a blow from the
cruel lash would have broken her heart; or else it would have made a
little fiend of the spirited creature. The lash is hardly ever good
for the sex.
For thirteen years, winter and summer, this coachman had driven this
monotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills,
scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight. What a time to nurse his
thought and feed on his heart! How deliberately he can turn things
over in his brain! What a system of philosophy he might evolve out
of his consciousness!
