were still seventeen miles from the railway station. Arraying ourselves
again in our dried garments, we bade a hasty but regretful 'good-by' to
our hospitable entertainers, and once more took to the road.

The storm had cleared away, but the ground was heavy with the recent
rain, and our horses were sadly jaded with the ride of the morning. We
therefore gave them the reins, and as they jogged on at their leisure,
it was ten o'clock at night before we reached the little hamlet of
W----Station, in the State of North-Carolina.

A large hotel, or station-house, and 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 _attachés_ 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