University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was formerly a journey
of days. Hence, to avoid travelling on the Sabbath it was
arranged by us to set out at three o'clock, A. M., on Monday.
A porter, however, of the stage-office aroused us at one
o'clock; when, hurrying on our garments, we were speedily
following our baggage trundled by the man, in that most
capacious of one-wheeled carriages—an antiquated wheelbarrow.

Arrived at the office, then kept by the Tomlinsons, the
agent affected to consider me and my wife as only one
person, and hence while I paid for two seats, he forced me
to pay for all my wife's baggage as extra;—an imposition
only submitted to, because in running my eye over the names
booked as passengers, while the vexatious record of the
baggage was making, travelling associates were seen written
there who were too delightful to be lsot fora trifle. These
names were Colonel Wilmar of Kentucky and his cousin,
Miss Wilmar, of Philadelphia. In addition were three
strange names booked for Pittsburgh, a Mr. Smith and a
Mr. Brown, and also a name hardly legible, but which, if
I had decyphered correctly, seemed very like Clarence—
strange, indeed, and yet familiar;—surely it had been known
to me once—Clarence?—who could it be?

None of these persons had yet reached the office, (the
stage, however, being ready and waiting only their arrival,)
and when they did come, owing to the dim light of the
room and the bustle of an immediate movement towards the
stage, countenances could not be distinguished; and even
the Wilmars could not have been recognised without the
premonition of the way-bill.

The stages of that day wore no boots. In place of that
leathern convenience, was a cross-barred ornament projecting
in the rear to receive the baggage or at least half of it.
This receptacle was called the “Rack.” Perhaps from
its wonderful adaptation for the utter demolition of what it
received, it was originally named “Wreck;” and this word,
in passing through the ordeal of vulgar pronunciation, where
it was called first “Wrack,” having lost its “W,” remained,
what indeed it so much resembled—the Rack. In binding
Mrs. Carlton's trunk to this curious engine, the porter broke
the rope, and her trunk falling down, the articles within, in
spite of an old lock and a rotten strap, burst from their confinement
and were scattered over the street. The porter
was very prompt in his aid in gathering the articles and
securing the lid, and as some compensation for his blunder
and its consequences, he refused the usual fee of the wheelbarrow
service. Of course he received now thanks for
generosity instead of rebukes for negligence: but on inspecting
afterwards our trunk, the absence of a purse containing
seven dollars and of a silver cup worth twice as
much, awakened suspicions of less honourable cause for the
porter's conduct.

Here then were, at the outset, extortion and theft, and
felt, too, as evils; but there was present a believing spirit
mingling sweetness with the wormwood. Ay! were we
not actually on our way to the land of vision! Surely no
such baseness is there! The sanctity of that Far West is
inviolate!

Inside, our stage was most judiciously filled with three
tiers. The lower tier was composed of saddle-bags, valises,
small trunks and carpet-bags; the second, of human beings
supported upright by an equal squeeze on all sides; and
then, on the condensed laps of the living tier, rested the
third tier, made up of extra cloaks, some band-boxes and
work-baskets, several spare hats in pasteboard cases, half

a dozen canes and umbrellas, and one fowling-piece done
up in green baize. Notwithstanding the great felicity of
this arrangement, the inquietude of the upper and lower
tiers when the stage first started, occasioned in the sentient
tier some inarticulate growling and a little half-smothered
cursing; which crusty symptoms, however, presently yielded
to a good-natured laugh at the perseverance with which Mr.
Brown remained on a French gentleman's foot, through a
misapprehension of a very polite and indirect request not to
stand there—a laugh in which the parties themselves joined.

Our driver had, at the office, seated between two way-passengers
with the curtain behind them dropped, given the
signal, when away dashed the horses; and then commenced
the inconsiderate restlessness of the internal baggage and
the ill-concealed surliness of the passengers. But at the
end of a few squares the stage suddenly stopped at a hotel,
when the door of the vehicle being instantly opened, the
space was filled with the head and shoulders of Mr. Brown,
who began as follows:—

“Ladies and gentlemen, you seem to be full in here, I
suppose it is no use to be looking for my seat in the dark—”

“Sare”—responded, evidently by the accent, a Frenchman,
and in a most complaisant and supplicatory tone—
“Sare, do not you know my foote is under yours?”

“No, sir,”—replied Mr. Brown standing up as well as
he could in the stage, and feeling about for some space.

“Sare, do not you know my foote is under yours?”—
voice higher and quicker.

“No, sir, I don't,”—surprised, but not budging.

“Sare, do you not know my foote is under yours?”—on
the octave, and getting higher and more emphatic.

“O! I beg your pardon, sir,—do you mane I'm raelly
treading on your fut?”—without, however, moving off, but
generously waiting for information.

“Yes! sare! I do!”

“Oh! I beg pardon, sir—raelly I thought I was standing

on a carpet-bag”—when, satisfied he was wrong in his
conjecture, and that it was “raelly the fut,” Mr. Brown instantly
removed the aggravating pressure.

Our friends thus introduced by the “foote” and the “fut”
as the gentleman from France and the gentleman from Ireland,
were welcomed by no inaudible laughter, in which
they also participated, while at the moment the door was
violently slammed, and that instantly followed by a startling
crack of the impatient whip. This was of great advantage
to Mr. Brown, as it helped him to a seat somewhere; although
from some peevish expressions, he must have alighted on
other quarters as well as his own. All outcries and growlings,
however, occasioned by hats and bonnets innocently
dashed into neighbouring faces, or by small trunks unable
to keep their gravity, and elastic sticks and umbrellas that
rubbed angrily against tender ancles or poked smartly into
defenceless backs, all were drowned in the rattling thunder
of the rolling wheels; and the tiers, rather loosely packed
at first, were soon, by the ferocious and determined jerking
and plunging of the vehicle, shaken into one compact quiescent
and democratical mass.

Unsuccessful attempts then came to sustain a general talk
on the weather, the time of reaching the breakfast, the hour
of the night, and the like novel and interesting topics; the
questions being commonly put, and the replies hazarded by
six or eight voices together, and in as many intervals of
pitch, from the grumbled bass to the most tremulous and
piteous treble. To these succeeded equally abortive efforts
to sustain duos and trios, till the whole performance of the
talk remained a solo. This performer, when day peeped
in upon us, proved to be a middle-aged and corpulent lady,
who sang out in a very peculiar and most penetrating tone;
herself both asking and answering, often categorically, but
for the most part in the “guess and may be” style of recitativo.
Encouraged by the silence of the company, the lady

at length in the same lofty strains sang out portions of her
own history, introducing the pleasing variations of “may-be-it-would”
and “may-be-it-would'nt”—“I guessed and he
guessed”—and “says I and says he,” &c. The burden,
however, of the piece was this:—it was her first trip to the
city, although from a little girl she had lived within thirty
miles—but her mother could never spare her—and when
she married Jacob, her and him could never leave home
together, and Jacob, he would never let her go alone by herself,
being “right down sarten she'd never come back again
alive or without some of her bones broken.”

Soon, however, we began to go “slowly and sadly” over
the Schuylkill bridge, when something not unlike snoring
admonished the lady of our seeming inattention, and her
musical narrative suddenly ceased, like the sudden holding
up of a hard rain; and then all were quickly either practising
sleep at random, or with troubled thoughts wandering
to the absent or indulging fitful dreams of the future.

Morning revealed by degrees the incumbents, and in very
imposing attitudes. For instance, there was the Frenchman,—his
head on the Irishman's shoulder, and keeping
pretty tolerable time to the music of the jolting carriage;
while the Irishman revived now and then by a desperate
lurch extra, as in atonement for his fault, made no attempt
to be rid of his burden, but slowly closing his eyes, nodded
away with his own head in the direction of our solo. But
all noddings in this book will be indulged by the classic
reader, who knows well enough:

Fronting myself was a person with hands holding to a
strap pendent from the roof, his head inclined towards his
breast, and his hat fallen off, but intercepted by Col. Wilmar,
his sleeping neighbour. This stranger, on several

elevations of his head, presented a countenance that set me
to recalling past scenes and associates, and I was in a fair
way of making some discovery, when all were fiercely
jerked into wakefulness by a most unnatural and savage
plunge of the stage, followed on the instant, like severe
lightning, by an explosion; the tiers becoming all vocal
with “bless my soul's”—“my goodnesses!”—and vulgar
“ouches!” Above all, however, sounded this pathetic remonstrance
in our talking lady's inimitable style:—“La!
Mister! if you aint nodded agin this here right bran new
bonnit of mine, till I vow if it aint as good as spiled!” To
this no reply was permitted as the horses suddenly halted,
and a venerable and decent landlord having opened the door
of the carriage, requested us to alight, adding that “the
stage breakfasts here.”

The live stock accordingly was unpacked and extricated
from the dead, no important damage being visible, except in
“the bran new bonnit;” and sure enough it was curiously
sloped contrary to nature, with an irregular concave in the front
and suitable enlargements sideways. Sceptics like Hume
would doubtless have raised a query, if the width was entirely
owing to the noddings of the Irish gentleman, or the
very ample rotundity of the cherry-cheeked and good,
humoured face expanded within the bonnet; but Mr. Brown
himself at once admitted his inconsiderate butting as the
cause, and with every appearance of concern he busied
himself with assisting the matron to alight and looking after
her baskets and boxes. This so won on her, that when at
the first opportunity Mr. Brown attempted an apology and
condolence, he was interrupted by her saying—“Oh! never
mind it, Mister, it aint no odds no how, and I guess we can
soon fix it.”

During our ablutions I caught the eye of the young stranger
already named, fixed with an inquiring look on my face;
and then we both, towel in hand, gradually advanced, yet

embarrassed and hesitating as if both recollected the incident,
“you thought it was me and I thought it was you, and
faith its nather of us,” till, arrived at proper distance, he
extended his hand and hazarded the affirmative inquiry:

“If I mistake not this is Robert Carlton!”

My reply showed it was each of us:

“Clarence! Charles Clarence!—is it possible!—is this
you!”

Reader, this Charles Clarence was the identical boy of
the adjacent seat, whose enthusiasm for bark cabins and
forest life, like my own, had beguiled us of many a hateful
lesson, and gained for us many a smart application of birch
and leather in parts left defenceless by scant patterns of
primitive roundabouts!

Shortly after this, in the parlour of the Warren tavern, a
general introduction took place among the Pittsburgh travellers:
viz. Mr. Brown, Mr. Smith, Col. Wilmar and Miss
Wilmar, Mr. Clarence and Mr. and Mrs. Carlton; who all,
in due season, shall be more particularly introduced to our
readers, as the Party. At present we must obey the signal
for breakfast; that meal being really prepared for the passengers,
although, by metonomy, it was in old times said to
be for the stage.