COUNTRY QUARTERS.

CHAPTER VIII.

"ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the captain is as fast as a church," thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the little landing-place at the stair-head. "Now then, my own Dietrich," she whispered, "are you ready to run?" For like the best of wives, as she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.

But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth; indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any locomotion so rapid as a At last he stood balancing, made up for the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled, and his arms

race.

swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of Andernach, that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing-fan, with a well-poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he accomplished it neatly.

"The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich." "Now then, Malchen!” "Now then, Dietrich,

and run gently,

on your toes ! " No sooner said than done. The modest Malchen, with the speed of a young wild elephant, made a rush across the room, and, with something of a jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed. The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his leap, so that just as his bulk came, squash! upon the coverlet, his predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the side of the bedstead.

THE BEARER OF THE GREAT SEAL.

"Sancta Maria!" sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics upon the floor.

"Potz-tausend!" said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the bed like a crab.

a

"Ten thousand devils!" bellowed Captain Schenk, suppressed exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full force.

*

Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand," says the reader, that we left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with the patchwork coverlet ? "

"And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand," says the author, "but it was so short that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial; and between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face, his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp, going uninvited down his gullet!"

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE OBSERVER.

"Ir's very strange," said the coachman, looking at me over his left shoulder, "I never see it afore: but I've made three observations through life."

Bat so called for shortness, though in feet and inches he was rather an Upper Benjamin was anything but what Othello denominates “ a puny whipster." He had brandished the whip for full thirty years, at an average of as many miles a day; the product of which, calculated according to Cocker, appears in a respectable sum total of six figures deep.

Now an experience picked up in a progress of some three hundred thousand miles is not to be slighted; so I leaned with my best ear over the coachman's shoulder, in order to catch every syllable.

"I have set on the box, man and boy," said Bat, looking straight ahead between his leaders, "a matter of full thirty year, and what's more, never missing a day, barring the Friday I was married; and one of my remarks is, I never see a sailor in top-boots."

"Now I think of it, Bat," said I, a little disconcerted at my windfall from the tree of knowledge, “ I have had some experience in travelling myself, and certainly do not recollect such a phenomenon."

"I'll take my oath you have n't," said Bat, giving the near leader a little switch of self-satisfaction; "I once driv the Phenomenon myself. There's no such thing in nature. And I'll tell you another remarkable remark I've made through life, I never yet see a Jew Pedler with a Newfoundland dog." "As for that, Bat," said I, perhaps willing to retort upon him a little of my own disappointment," though I cannot call such a sight to mind, I will not undertake to say I have never met with such an association."

"If you have, you're a lucky man," said Bat, somewhat sharply, and with a smart cut on the wheeler; "I belong to an association too, and we 've none of us seen it. There's a hundred members, and I've inquired of every man of 'em, for it's

my remark. But some people see a deal more than their fellows. Mayhap you've seen the other thing I've observed. through life, and that's this, I've never observed a black man driving a long stage."

66

Never, Bat," said I, desiring to conciliate him, "never in the whole course of my stage practice; and for many years of my life I was a daily visitant to Richmond."

“And no one else has ever seen it," said Bat. correct remark, anyhow.

"That's a

As for Richmond, he never drove a team in his life, for I asked him the question myself, just after his fight with Shelton."

THE CONTRAST.

"I HOPE the Leviathian is outward-bound," I ejaculated, half aloud, as I beheld the Kit-Kat portion of the Man-Mountain occupying the whole frame of the coach-window. But Hope deceived as usual; and in he came.

I ought rather to have said he essayed to come in, for it was only after repeated experiments upon material substances, that he contrived to enter the vehicle edgeways, - if such blunt bodies may be said to have an edge at all. As I contemplated his bulk, I could not help thinking of the mighty Lambert, and was ready to exclaim with Gratiano, “ A Daniel ! a second Daniel ! "

The Brobdignaggian had barely subsided in his seat, when the opposite door opened, and in stepped a Liliputian! The conjunction was whimsical. Yonder, thought I, is the Irish Giant, and the other is the dwarf, Count Borulawski. This coach is their travelling caravan, and as for myself, I am no

doubt the showman.

I was amusing myself with this and kindred fancies, when a hand suddenly held up something at the coach window. "It's my luggage," said the Giant, with a small penny-trumpet of a pipe, and taking possession of a mere golden pippin of a bundle.

"The three large trunks and the biggest carpet-bag are my property," said the Dwarf, with a voice as unexpectedly stentorian.

"Warm day, sir," squeaked the Giant, by way of small talk.