brow. The toll-gatherer administers a cup of cold water, and discovering
his guest to be a man of homely sense, be engages him in profitable talk,
uttering the maxims of a philosophy which he has found in his own soul,
but knows not how it came there. And as the wayfarer makes ready to
resume his journey, he tells him a sovereign remedy for blistered feet.
Now comes the noontide hour,--of all the hours nearest akin to midnight;
for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world
begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of the
day; when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The draw
being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner, laden with wood from
the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably, right athwart the bridge!
Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm, a throng of impatient travellers
fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig, with the top thrown back,
both puffing cigars, and swearing all sorts of forecastle oaths; there,
in a smart chaise, a dashingly dressed gentleman and lady, he from a
tailor's shop-board; and she from a milliner's hack room,--the
aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest of us,
but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's day? Here is a tin-pedler,
whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders, like a travelling meteor,
or opposition sun; and on the other side a seller of spruce-beer, which
brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here comes a
party of ladies on horseback, in green riding-habits, and gentlemen
attendant; and there a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the
bridge with a multitudinous clatter of their little hoofs. Here a
Frenchman, with a hand-organ on his shoulder; and there an itinerant
Swiss jeweller. On this side, heralded by a blast of clarions and
bugles, appears a train of wagons, conveying all the wild beasts of a
caravan; and on that, a company of summer soldiers, marching from village
to village on a festival campaign, attended by the "brass band." Now
look at the scene, and it presents an emblem of the mysterious confusion,