counters an Oily and Waterproof Witch at the end
of his Journey.

It rained, and it _meant_ to rain, and it set about it with a
will.

It was as if some "Union Thunderstorm Company" was just then
paying its consolidated attention to the city and county of New
York; or, as if some enterprising Yankee of hydraulic tendencies,
had contracted for a second deluge and was hurrying up the job to
get his money; or, as if the clouds were working by the job; or,
as if the earth was receiving its rations of rain for the year in
a solid lump; or, as if the world had made a half-turn, leaving
in the clouds the ocean and rivers, and those auxiliaries to
navigation were scampering back to their beds as fast as
possible; or, as if there had been a scrub-race to the earth
between a score or more full-grown rain storms, and they were all
coming in together, neck-and-neck, at full speed.

Despite the juiciness of these opening sentences, the
"Individual" does not propose to accompany the account of his
heroical setting-forth on his first witch-journey with any
inventory of natural scenery and phenomena, or with any
interesting remarks on the wind and weather. Those who have a
taste for that sort of thing will find in a modern circulating
library, elaborate accounts of enough "dew-spangled grass" to
make hay for an army of Nebuchadnezzars and a hundred troops of
horse--of "bright-eyed daisies" and "modest violets," enough to
fence all creation with a parti-colored hedge--of "early larks"
and "sweet-singing nightingales," enough to make musical pot-pies
and harmonious stews for twenty generations of Heliogabaluses; to
say nothing of the amount of twaddle we find in American
sensation books about "hawthorn hedges" and "heather bells," and
similar transatlantic luxuries that don't grow in America, and
never did.

And then the sunrises we're treated to, and the sunsets we're
crammed with, and the "golden clouds," the "grand old woods,"
the "distant dim blue mountains," the "crystal lakes," the
"limpid purling brooks," the "green-carpeted meadows," and the
whole similar lot of affected bosh, is enough to shake the faith
of a practical man in nature as a natural institution, and to
make him vote her an artificial humbug.

So the voyager in pursuit of the marvellous, declines to state
how high the thermometer rose or fell in the sun or in the shade,
or whether the wind was east-by-north, or sou'-sou'-west by a
little sou'.

The "d