e oxen that wore them were careering over
the pampas of the Spanish Main--a type of all obstinacy, and evincing
how almost hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. I
confess, that practically speaking, when I have learned a man's real
disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse
in this state of existence. As the Orientals say, "A cur's tail may be
warmed, and pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve
years' labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form."
The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as these tails exhibit is
to make glue of them, which I believe is what is usually done with them,
and then they will stay put and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses
or of brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont, some
trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for the farmers near his
clearing, and now perchance stands over his bulkhead and thinks of
the last arrivals on the coast, how they may affect the price for him,
telling his customers this moment, as he has told them twenty times
before this morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime
quality. It is advertised in the Cuttingsville Times.

While these things go up other things come down. Warned by the whizzing
sound, I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far
northern hills, which has winged its way over the Green Mountains and
the Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township within ten
minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it; going

"to be the mast
Of some great ammiral."

And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a thousand
hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their
sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the
mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by
the September gales. The air is filled with the bleating of calves and
sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by.
When the old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell, the mountains
do indeed skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. A carload
of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves now, their
vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge
of office. But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them;
they are quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks