. Never was black tea
less herb-like; never draught of sillery, quaffed from goblet of rare
Bohemian glass, more delicious! And so, with thank-yous that were not
only from the lip, we toil on some distance yet, to the shaft by which
we are to ascend,--one quite remote from that by which we began our
trip.

Halting at the foot of the ladder, we pour forth the "Star-spangled
Banner" with the full strength of lungs inflated by patriotism, until
the stirring staves ring and resound through those dim caves. The
miners, who hold the superstition, that to whisper bodes ill-luck, must
have imagined we were exorcising evil spirits with an incantation.

Then begins our weary way upward. We sing "Excelsior" in our hearts, and
forget our aching limbs, for the most laborious portion of the night's
toil is before us. The almost perpendicular ladder is just beside the
powerful pump, which, worked by a steam-engine, exhausts the water from
the mine, and its busy piston, in monotonous measure, keeps time to our
climbing.

Two rests during the entire distance, which we travel in brave silence.
Indeed, we cannot speak,--the oppressive strain upon the chest is so
great. Step after step, hand over hand, up we go. At last, warmer air
greets us, lights flicker from above; the trap-door is reached; we are
on the surface again; we are out of the depths,--and our hearts whisper
a _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving.

I think well of the establishment of a chapel, such as exists at the
entrance to the Valenciana mine in Mexico, where each miner spends half
an hour, going to or returning from his labors. Such a union of work and
worship seems a proper adjunct to the profit and the peril.

There is a faint glimmer of coming dawn far away in the east, as we
go forth into the midsummer-night, and we catch the distant notes of
chanticleer, as he sounds his shrill _reveille_ to the day.

As my confused brain seeks repose, and my weary limbs sink into the
softness of the never-so-welcome bed, my thoughts fly to distant ones,
to whom I would whisper,--as I do to you who have so patiently burrowed
with me,--"Only love me for the dangers I have passed!"

But it is in vain that you long for a similar experience, my dear Laura
Matilda. Being the first, we are also the last women to whom these
subterranean passages will yield their mysteries, their windings, and
their wonders. Against all of my own sex the Pandemonian depths of the
Minnesota Mines are hencefort