James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

[110] filled each with three persons, and there should by rights have been a third on ours; for this nefarious black hole on wheels is intended to carry nine. However, we profited little by the space; for, letting alone that there is not really and truly room for more than two human beings of common growth and proportions on each of these seats, the third place was amply filled up with baskets and packages of ours, and huge undouble-up coats and cloaks of my father's.

For the first few minutes I thought I must have fainted from the intolerable sensation of smothering which I experienced. However, the leathers having been removed, and a little more air obtained, I took heart of grace and resigned myself to my fate. Away walloped the four horses, trotting with their front and galloping with their hind legs; and away went we after them, bumping, jumping, thumping, jolting, shaking, tossing, and tumbling, over the wickedest road, I do think, the cruelest, heard-heartedest road that ever wheel rumbled upon. Through bog, and marsh, and ruts, wider and deeper than any Christian ruts I ever saw, with the roots of trees protruding across our path, their boughs every now and then giving us an affectionate scratch through the windows; and, more than once, a half-demolished trunk or stump lying it the middle of the road lifting us up, and letting us down again, with most awful variations of our poor coachbody from its natural position. Bones of me I what a road I Even my father's solid proportions could not keep their level, but were jerked up to the roof and down again every three minutes.

Our companions seemed nothing dismayed by these wondrous performances of a coach and four, but laughed and talked incessantly, the young ladies at the very top of their voices and with the national nasal twang. The conversation was much of the genteel shopkeeper kind, the wit of the ladies and the gallantry savoring strongly of tapes and yard measures,