felt that we had slept as much as was
necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the
world, we pulled off our clothes and got ready for breakfast.
We were just pleasantly in time, for five minutes afterward
the driver sent the weird music of his bugle winding over 15
the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low hut
or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the
clatter of our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp commands,
awoke to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we
went sweeping down on the station at our smartest speed. 20
It was fascinating--that old Overland stagecoaching.

We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed
his gathered reins out on the ground, gaped and stretched
complacently, drew off his heavy buckskin gloves with
great deliberation and insufferable dignity--taking not 25
the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquiries after his
health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and
obsequious tenders of service, from five or six hairy and
half-civilized station keepers and hostlers who were nimbly
unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team out of the 30
stables--for in the eyes of the stage driver of that day,
station keepers and hostlers were a sort of good-enough low
creatures, useful in their place and helping to make up a
world, but not the kind of beings which a person of distinction
could afford to concern himself with; while on the
contrary, in the eyes of the station keeper and the hostler,
the stage driver was a hero--a great and shining dignitary; 5
the world's favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed
of the nations.

When they spoke to him they received his insolent
silence meekly and as being the natural and proper
conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips 10
they all hung on his words with admiration (he never
honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed
it with a broad generality to the horses, the stables,
the surrounding country, and the human underlings); when
he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, 15
that hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his
one jest--old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted
on the same audience, in that same language, every
time his coach drove up there--the varl