ed for one, i. e. one's share of a bed for
two,--supper,--each horse's forage,--breakfast,--every several item, a
dollar. No matter how afflicted the family, saleratusy the bread, loud
the dogs,--nothing was furnished under the dollar. When people happen to
have enough dollars, this becomes comic. It reminded us of the Catskill
Mountain House, where in specie-times everything (after hotel-bills) was
twenty-five cents,--from getting a waiter to look at you, to having the
Falls tipped up for you.

The day's journey between the afflicted family and Dog Creek, where we
stopped the third night, is such an affluent remembrance of beauty that
I feel glad while I write about it. We started under circumstances
somewhat tedious. Nobody was going toward Mount Shasta with so much as a
pack-mule. The father of the afflicted family labored under the blight
of his surroundings, and after severe thought gave up the task of
attempting to recall when anybody _had_ been going toward Mount Shasta.
It was also too much for him to calculate when anybody would be going.
We paid him his dollars,--wished that his shadow might never be less,
which it couldn't very well, unless the ague can dance on a mathematical
line,--and set out with the color-box carried alternately before us on
our pommels. It had been our _bete noire_ from the time five dollars and
fifty cents ransomed it at Shasta. We now began to wonder whether the
Express Company also had carried it on a pommel,--in which case we
thought we could forgive the Express Company. The morning was sultry,
and as we started our horses forth upon a walk,--for the box could not
stand jolting,--we looked forward to a tiresome day.

As we went on, Nature seemed determined to kiss us out of the sulks.
Just as we broke into fresh grumbles, which we wanted to indulge, and
our horses into fresh trots, which we desired, but could not tolerate,
we entered some lovely glen, musical with tinkling springs, its walling
banks tapestried with the richest velvet of deep-green grass, brocaded
with spots of leaf-filtered sunshine. When we began to swelter, we came
into the dense shadow of great oaks, or caught the balmiest wind in the
world through aromatic pine and cedar vistas along the crown of some
lofty ridge. It was impossible to be vexed with the step-mother, Fate,
when the fingers of our mother, Nature, were straying through our hair.
To drive away the last elf of ill-humor, and make us thenceforth agree