certain phase of the manners of our great and glorious country?
Where are the Trollopes? Where is Dickens? Where is Basil
Hall?

It is but a dreary ride to Lake George on a dark and rainy
evening, unless people like riding for its own sake, as I do.
If there are suns and stars and skies, very well. If there
are not, very well too: I like to ride all the same. I like
everything in this world but Saratoga. Once or twice our
monotony was broken up by short halts before country inns.
At one an excitement was going on. "Had a casualty here this
afternoon," remarked a fresh passenger, as soon as he was
fairly seated. A casualty is a windfall to a country village.
It is really worth while to have a head broken occasionally,
for the wholesome stirring-up it gives to the heads that are
not broken. On the whole, I question whether collisions and
collusions do not cause as much good as harm. Certainly,
people seem to take the most lively satisfaction in receiving
and imparting all the details concerning them. Our
passenger-friend opened his budget with as much complacence as
ever did Mr. Gladstone or Disraeli, and with a confident air
of knowing that he was going not only to enjoy a piece of
good-fortune himself, but to administer a great gratification
to us. Our "casualty" turned out to be the affair of a
Catholic priest, of which our informer spoke only in dark hints
and with significant shoulder-shrugs and eyebrow-elevations,
because it was "not exactly the thing to get out, you know";
but if it wasn't to get out, why did he let it out? and so from
my dark corner I watched him as a cat does a mouse, and the
lamp-light shone full upon him, and I understood every word and