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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859 by Various
page 45 of 306 (14%)
leave a message on his door, explaining his absence. In less than an
hour he was in the railway-train, on his way to Innisfield.

To the musing or drowsy traveller by rail how space and time are
annihilated! He is barely conscious of progress, only when the brakeman
with measured tone shouts the name of the station; he looks up from his
paper or rouses from his doze, looks out at the cheerless prospect, and
then settles himself for another thirty miles. Time passes as unobserved
as the meadows or bushy pastures that flit by the jarring window at
his ear. But with Greenleaf, the reader will believe, the case was far
different. He had never noticed before how slowly the locomotives really
moved. At each station where wood and water were to be taken, it seemed
to him the delay was interminable. His eager desire shot along the track
like electricity; and when at last he reached the place where he was to
leave the train, he had gone through a year of ordinary hopes and fears.
He mounted the stage-box and took his seat beside the buffalo-clad,
coarse-bearded, and grim driver. The road lay through a hilly country,
with many romantic views on either hand. It was late in the season to
see the full glories of autumn; but the trees were not yet bare, and in
many places the contrasts of color were exquisite. For once the driver
found his match; he had a passenger as taciturn as himself. For the
first few miles not a word was spoken, saving a few brief threats to the
horses; but at last Jehu could hold out no longer; his reputation was
in danger, if he allowed any one to be more silent than himself, and he
cautiously commenced a skirmish.

"From Boston?"

A nod was the only reply.

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