ging of tints, from flashing, dewy splendor, through the
softness of shining mists, to the glooms of gray clouds, and the
blinding, uncompromising rain,--so that I would have ridden in a
cistern rather than have failed to see it. Well, when the outside was
seen to be a fixed fact, then I must sit in the middle of the
coachman's seat. Why? That by boot, umbrellas, and a man on each
side, I might be protected in flank, and rear, and van. I said audibly,
that I would rather be set quick i' the earth, and bowled to death with
turnips. If my object had been protection, I should have gone inside.
This was worse than inside, for it was inside contracted. If I looked
in front, there was an umbrella with rare glimpses of a steaming horse
on each side, the exhilarating view of a great coat behind, a pair of
boots. I might as well have been buried alive. No, the upper seat was
the only one for a civilized and enlightened being to occupy. There
you could be free and look about, and not be crowded; and I am happy to
be able to say, that I am not so unused to water as to be afraid of a
little more or less of it. So I ceased to argue, planted myself on the
upper seat, grasped tho railing, and smiled on the angry remonstrants
below,--smiled, but STUCK! "Let her go," said the driver in a savage,
whispered growl,--not to me, but a little bird told me,--"let her go.
Can't never do nothin' with women. They never know what's good for
'em. When she's well wet, then she'll want to be dried." True, O
driver! and thrice that morning you stopped to change horses, and
thrice with knightly grace you helped me down from the coach-top,
gentle-handed and smooth of brow and tongue, as if no storm had ever
lowered on that brow or muttered on that tongue, and thrice I went into
the village inns and brooded over the hospitable stoves, and dried my
dripping garments; and when once your voice rang through the hostelrie,
while yet I was enveloped in clouds of steam, did not the good young
woman seize her sizzling flat-iron from the stove, and iron me out on
her big table, so that I went not only dry and comfortable, but smooth,
uncreased, and respectable, forth into the outer world again?

PART VI.

Thus I rode, amphibious and happy, on the top of the coach, with only
one person sharing the seat with me, and he fortunately a stranger, and
therefore sweet tempered, and a very agreeable and intelligent man,
talking sensibly when he talked at