aguish chills, that I was not at all sorry for the compelled pedestrianism
entailed upon me by the insecure state of these bridges.

My young charge seemed extremely timid while crossing them, and uttered a
few suppressed shrieks when curious splitting noises, apparently
proceeding from the woodwork, broke the stillness; nor was I altogether
surprised at her emotions when, as we were walking over a bridge nearly
half a mile in length, I was told that a coach and six horses had
disappeared through it a fortnight before, at the cost of several broken
limbs.

While crossing the St. John, near the pretty town of Hampton, one of our
leaders put both his fore feet into a hole, and was with difficulty
extricated.

Precisely at midnight the stage clattered down the steep streets of the
city of St. John, to which the ravages of the cholera had recently given
such a terrible celebrity. After a fruitless pilgrimage to three hotels,
we were at length received at Waverley House, having accomplished a
journey of one hundred miles in twenty hours! On ringing my bell, it was
answered by a rough porter, and I soon found that _waiting_ chambermaids
are not essential at Transatlantic hotels; and the female servants, or
rather _helps_, are of a very superior class. A friend of mine, on leaving
an hotel at Niagara, offered a _douceur_ in the shape of half a dollar to
one of these, but she drew herself up, and proudly replied, "American
ladies do not receive money from gentlemen." Having left my keys at the
Bend, I found my valise a useless incumbrance, rather annoying after a
week of travelling.

We spent the Sunday at St. John, and, the opportune arrival of my keys