far-off future of arrival.

Such, I say, are my own unambitious mental pastimes, but I am aware that
less superficial spirits could not be satisfied with them, and I can not
pretend that my wedding-journeyers were so.

They cast an absurd poetry over the landscape; they invited themselves
to be reminded of passages of European travel by it; and they placed
villas and castles and palaces upon all the eligible building-sites.
Ashamed of these devices, presently, Basil patriotically tried to
reconstruct the Dutch and Indian past of the Mohawk Valley, but here he
was foiled by the immense ignorance of his wife, who, as a true American
woman, knew nothing of the history of her own country, and less than
nothing of the barbarous regions beyond the borders of her native
province. She proved a bewildering labyrinth of error concerning the
events which Basil mentioned; and she had never even heard of the
massacres by the French and Indians at Schenectady, which he in his
boyhood had known so vividly that he was scalped every night in his
dreams, and woke up in the morning expecting to see marks of the
tomahawk on the head-board. So, failing at last to extract any sentiment
from the scenes without, they turned their faces from the window, and
looked about them for amusement within the car.

It was in all respects an ordinary carful of human beings, and it was
perhaps the more worthy to be studied on that account. As in literature
the true artist will shun the use even of real events if they are of an
improbable character, so the sincere observer of man will not desire
to look upon the heroic or occasional phases, but will seek him in his
habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness. To me, at any rate, he is at
such times very precious; and I never perceive him to be so much a
man and a brother as when I feel the pressure of his vast, natural,
unaffected dullness. Then I am able to enter confidently into his life
and inhabit there, to think his shallow and feeble thoughts, to be
moved by his dumb, stupid desires, to be dimly illumined by his stinted
inspirations, to share his foolish prejudices, to practice his obtuse
selfishness. Yes, it is a very amusing world, if you do not refuse to
be amused; and our friends were very willing to be entertained. They
delighted in the precise, thick-fingered old ladies who bought sweet
apples of the boys come aboard with baskets, and who were so long in
finding the right change, that our trave