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Next morning it poured. The cinders before
the blacksmith's shop opposite had yielded their
black dye to the dismal puddles. The village cocks
were sadly draggled and discouraged, and cowered
under any shelter, shivering within their drowned
plumage. Who on such a morn would stir? Who
but the Patriot? Hardly had we breakfasted,
when he, the Patriot, waited upon us. It was a
Presidential campaign. They were starving in his
village for stump-speeches. Would the talking
man of our duo go over and feed their ears with a
fiery harangue? Patriot was determined to be
first with us; others were coming with similar
invitations; he was the early bird. Ah, those
portmanteaus! they had arrived, and betrayed us.

We would not be snapped up. We would wriggle
away. We were very sorry, but we must start
at once to pursue our journey.

“But it pours,” said Patriot.

“Patriot,” replied our talking member, “man is
flesh; and flesh, however sweet or savory it may
be, does not melt in water.”

Thus fairly committed to start, we immediately
opened negotiations for a carriage. “No go,”
was the first response of the coachman. Our willy
was met by his nilly. But we pointed out to him

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that we could not stay there all a dismal day, —
that we must, would, could, should go. At last
we got within coachee's outworks. His nilly broke
down into shilly-shally. He began to state his objections;
then we knew he was ready to yield.
We combated him, clinking the supposed gold of
coppers in our pockets, or carelessly chucking a
tempting half-dollar at some fly on the ceiling. So
presently we prevailed, and he retired to make
ready.

By and by a degraded family-carriage came to
the door. It came by some feeble inertia left latent
in it by some former motive-power, rather than was
dragged up by its more degraded nags. A very
unwholesome coach. No doubt a successful quack-doctor
had used it in his prosperous days for his
wife and progeny; no doubt it had subsequently
become the property of a second-class undertaker,
and had conveyed many a quartette of cheap clergymen
to the funerals of poor relations whose
leaking sands of life left no gold-dust behind.
Such was our carriage for a rainy day.

The nags were of the huckleberry or flea-bitten
variety, — a freckled white. Perhaps the quack
had fed them with his refuse pills. These knobby-legged
unfortunates we of course named Xanthus
and Balius, not of podargous or swift-footed, but
podagrous or gouty race. Xanthus, like his Achillean
namesake, (vide Pope's Homer,)


“Seemed sensible of woe, and dropped his head, —
Trembling he stood before the (seedy) wain.”

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Balius was in equally deplorable mood. Both seemed
more sensible to “Whoä” than to “Hadaap.” Podagrous
beasts, yet not stiffened to immobility.
Gayer steeds would have sundered the shackling
drag. These would never, by any gamesome caracoling,
endanger the coherency of pole with body,
of axle with wheel. From end to end the equipage
was congruous. Every part of the machine
was its weakest part, and that fact gave promise
of strength: an invalid never dies. Moreover,
the coach suited the day: the rusty was in harmony
with the dismal. It suited the damp, unpainted
houses, and the tumble-down blacksmith's-shop.
We contented ourselves with this artistic
propriety. We entered, treading cautiously. The
machine, with gentle spasms, got itself in motion,
and steered due east for Lake Umbagog. The
smiling landlord, the disappointed Patriot, and the
birdlike George waved us farewell.

Coachee was in the sulks. The rain beat upon
him, and we by purse-power had compelled him to
encounter discomfort. His self-respect must be
restored by superiority over somebody. He had
been beaten and must beat. He did so. His
horses took the lash until he felt at peace with
himself. Then half turning toward us, he made his
first remark.

“Them two hosses is gorming.”

“Yes,” we replied, “they do seem rather so.”

This was of course profound hypocrisy; but
“gorming” meant some bad quality, and any

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might be safely predicated of our huckleberry pair.
Who will admit that he does not know all that is to
be known in horse-matters? We therefore asked
no questions, but waited patiently for information.

Delay pays demurrage to the wisely patient.
Coachee relapsed into the sulks. The driving rain
resolved itself into a dim chaos of mist. Xanthus
and Balius plodded on, but often paused and gasped,
or, turning their heads as if they missed something,
strayed from the track and drew us against
the dripping bushes. After one such excursion,
which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which
by calling out coachee's scourging powers had put
him thoroughly in good humor, he turned to us and
said, superlatively, —

“Them 's the gormingest hosses I ever see.
When I drew 'em in the four-hoss coach for
wheelers, they could keep a straight tail. Now
they act like they was drunk. They 's gorming,—
they won't do nothin' without a leader.”

To gorm, then, is to err when there is no leader.
Alas, how mankind gorms!

By sunless noon we were well among the mountains.
We came to the last New Hampshire
house, miles from its neighbors. But it was a self-sufficing
house, an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma,
bald under her cap, was seated by the
stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap.
Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa
was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs.
The intervening ages were well

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represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house,
also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur
bazaar of vivers and goods. Anything one was
likely to want could be had there, — even a melodeon
and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports.
Here we descended, lunched, and providently
bought a general assortment, namely, a large plain
cake, five pounds of cheese, a ball of twine, and
two pairs of brown ribbed woollen socks, native
manufacture. My pair of these indestructibles
will outlast my last legs and go as an heirloom
after me.

The weather now, as we drove on, seemed to
think that Iglesias deserved better of it. Rainglobes
strung upon branches, each globe the possible
home of a sparkle, had waited long enough
unillumined. Sunlight suddenly discovered this
desponding patience and rewarded it. Every drop
selected its own ray from the liberal bundle, and,
crowding itself full of radiance, became a mirror
of sky and cloud and forest. Also, by the searching
sunbeams' store of regal purple, ripe raspberries
were betrayed. On these, magnified by their
convex lenses of water, we pounced. Showers
shook playfully upon us from the vines, while we
revelled in fruitiness. We ran before our gormers,
they gormed by us while we plucked, we ran by,
plucked again, and again were gormingly overtaken
and overtook. Thus we ate our way luxuriously
through the Dixville Notch, a capital cleft in a northern
spur of the White Mountains.

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Picturesque is a curiously convenient, undiscriminating
epithet. I use it here. The Dixville Notch
is, briefly, picturesque, — a fine gorge between a
crumbling conical crag and a scarped precipice, —
a pass easily defensible, except at the season when
raspberries would distract sentinels.

Now we came upon our proper field of action.
We entered the State of Maine at Township Letter
B. A sharper harshness of articulation in stray
passengers told us that we were approaching the
vocal influence of the name Androscoggin. People
talked as if, instead of ivory ring or coral rattle to
develop their infantile teeth, they had bitten upon
pine knots. Voices were resinous and astringent.
An opera, with a chorus drummed up in those
regions, could dispense with violins.

Toward evening we struck the river, and found
it rasping and crackling over rocks as an Androscoggin
should. We passed the last hamlet, then
the last house but one, and finally drew up at the
last and northernmost house, near the lumbermen's
dam below Lake Umbagog. The damster, a stalwart
brown chieftain of the backwoodsman race,
received us with hearty hospitality. Xanthus and
Balius stumbled away on their homeward journey.
And after them the crazy coach went moaning: it
was not strong enough to creak or rattle.

Next day was rainy. It had, however, misty
intervals. In these we threw a fly for trout and
caught a chub in Androscoggin. Or, crouched on
the bank of a frog-pond, we tickled frogs with

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straws. Yes, and fun of the freshest we found it.
Certain animals, and especially frogs, were created,
shaped, and educated to do the grotesque, that men
might study them, laugh, and grow fat. It was a
droll moment with Nature, when she entertained
herself and prepared entertainment for us by devising
the frog, that burlesque of bird, beast, and
man, and taught him how to move and how to
speak and sing. Iglesias and I did not disdain
batrachian studies, and set no limit to our merriment
at their quaint, solemn, half-human pranks.
One question still is unresolved, — Why do frogs
stay and be tickled? They snap snappishly at the
titillating straw; they snatch at it with their weird
little hands; they parry it skilfully. They hardly
can enjoy being tickled, and yet they endure, paying
a dear price for the society of their betters.
Frogs the frisky, frogs the spotted, were our
comedy that day. Whenever the rain ceased, we
rushed forth and tickled them, and thus vicariously
tickled ourselves into more than patience, into
jollity. So the day passed quickly.

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