Here and There in Our Own Country
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| Partner: | buecher.de |
| Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Author, Unknown) |
| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Here and There in Our Own Country: Embracing Sketches of Travel and Descriptions of Places, Etc;, Etc The stage-driver was on the platform, waiting for the mail-bag, and I asked if he had a spare seat. "Yes, sir," he answered, "one, - on my nigh mare. But I karn´t take you no furder nor Ottinger´s; beyant thar you´ll have to take to Shank´s mares; but taint only two miles to the Spring House." "Shank´s mares?" I asked. "What sort of mares are they?" "Why, yer legs, stranger; and you´ll be lucky if you get through on them, for thar hain´t no road; it´s all torned up by the cussed railroad. It´s a reg´lar dog in the manger: it don´t travil itself nor let no one else travil." Calling to mind what the train-conductor had said about the "perseverance of the saints," I decided to accept the vacant seat on the "nigh mare," and then hurried to the public house to break a long fast and deposit my luggage, which Shank´s mares might find inconveniently heavy to carry. Every traveller in this part of the world knows this quaint, old-fashioned inn, nestling among the hills, its low roof and wide veranda overhung with broad-branching trees, which yield a grateful shelter from the torrid heat of midsummer. Very pleasant is it to come upon it when the outer world is sweltering in the heated air, and to have the breeze which comes down the mountain-gorge fan your cheek with the cool breath of October. But quite as pleasant is the old inn in the depth of winter, though its attractions are then all indoors, - in a warm fire, a warm welcome, and a bounteous repast, which the kindly landlady sets before you in the low-ceilinged dining-room. I was in the midst of such a repast, when the Jehu thrust his head in at the door-way with "Hurry up, hurry up, sir. The mail can´t wait. We shan´t git thar before midnight." It was an hour before nightfall when we mounted to the "top of the stage" and rode off into the snow-storm. The flakes were falling fast, and the cold wind from the near mountains drove them in blinding gusts into our faces, frosting our hair till our locks were as venerably white as those of Old Time in the primer. The "nigh mare" was not the horse which won the last race at Nashville, but a slower animal; and she stumbled along over the frozen road with a persistent disregard of a direct course and a steadfast footing. It required about all my attention to watch her unsteady gyrations; but I did now and then give a glance at the country through which we were passing. Most of it was covered with magnificent timber, - oak, pine, and poplar, - straight as the mast of a ship, and towering a hundred feet into the air. The land, I was told, could be bought for a dollar an acre, and there were evidently ten of such trees upon every acre: so it seemed only necessary to put an axe into that timber to realize a fortune. This was my first opinion; but as I rode on in the dim light of the half-blinding storm I soon came to a different conclusion. I discovered that the larger portion of the land was set up edgewise, and too near the perpendicular to be trodden by the foot of man until he has invented some new mode of locomotion. It soon became dark, and the storm increased with the night; but we rode on, now wading some stream breast-high to the horses, and then again floundering over the icy ground, my only guide the steady tattoo beat by the heels of the "off horse," as he kept just one length ahead of me on the frozen road. "I say, stranger," shouted the Jehu out of the darkness, "a man is a goldarned fool as drives stage in this weather." <
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