while the iron locomotives, dripping fire and
water, shed their steam about plentifully,
making the dull oxen in their cages, with
heads depressed, and foam hanging from their
mouths as their red looks glanced fearfully
at the surrounding terrors, seem as though
they had been drinking at half-frozen waters
and were hung with icicles. Through the
same steam would be caught glimpses of
their fellow-travellers, the sheep, getting
their white kid faces together, away from
the bars, and stuffing the interstices with
trembling wool. Also, down among the
wheels, of the man with the sledge-hammer,
ringing the axles of the fast night-train;
against whom the oxen have a misgiving
that he is the man with the pole-axe who is
to come by-and-bye, and so the nearest of them
try to back, and get a purchase for a thrust at
him through the bars. Suddenly, the bell
would ring, the steam would stop with one hiss
and a yell, the chemists on the beanstalks
would be busy, the avenging Furies would
bestir themselves, the fast night-train would
melt from eye and ear, the other trains going
their ways more slowly would be heard faintly
rattling in the distance like old-fashioned
watches running down, the sauce-bottle
and cheap music retired from view, even
the bedstead went to bed, and there was
no such visible thing as the Station to vex
the cool wind in its blowing, or perhaps the
autumn lightning, as it found out the iron
rails.

The infection of the Station was this:—
When it was in its raving state, the
Apprentices found it impossible to be there,
without labouring under the delusion that
they were in a hurry. To Mr. Goodchild,
whose ideas of idleness were so imperfect,
this was no unpleasant hallucination, and
accordingly that gentleman went through
great exertions in yielding to it, and running
up and down the platform, jostling everybody,
under the impression that he had a highly
important mission somewhere, and had not
a moment to lose. But, to Thomas Idle, this
contagion was so very unacceptable an
incident of the situation, that he struck on the
fourth day, and requested to be moved.

"This place fills me with a dreadful
sensation," said Thomas, " of having something
to do. Remove me, Francis."

"Where would you like to go next? " was
the question of the ever-engaging Goodchild.

"I have heard there is a good old Inn at
Lancaster, established in a fine old house:
an Inn where they give you Bride-cake every
day after dinner," said Thomas Idle. " Let
us eat Bride-cake without the trouble of
being married, or of knowing anybody in
that ridiculous dilemma."

Mr. Goodchild, with a lover's sigh,
assented. They departed from the Station in
a violent hurry (for which, it is unnecessary
to observe, there was not the least occasion),
and were delivered at the fine old house at
Lancaster, on the same night.

It is Mr. Goodchild's opinion, that if a
visitor on his arrival at Lancaster could be
accommodated with a pole which would push
the opposite side of the street some yards
farther off, it would be better for all parties.
Protesting against being required to live in
a trench, and obliged to speculate all day
upon what the people can possibly be doing
within a mysterious opposite window, which
is a shop-window to look at, but not a shop-
window in respect of its offering nothing for
sale and declining to give any account whatever
of itself, Mr. Goodchild concedes
Lancaster to be a pleasant place. A place
dropped in the midst of a charming landscape,
a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle,
a place of lovely walks, a place possessing
staid old houses richly fitted with old
Honduras mahagony, which has grown so dark
with time that it seems to have got
something of a retrospective mirror-quality into
itself, and to show the visitor, in the depths
of its grain, through all its polish, the hue of
the wretched slaves who groaned long ago
under old Lancaster merchants. And Mr.
Goodchild adds that the stones of Lancaster
do sometimes whisper, even yet, of rich men
passed away—upon whose great prosperity
some of these old doorways frowned sullen in
the brightest weather—that their slave-gain
turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard's
money turned to leaves, and that no good
ever came of it, even unto the third and
fourth generations, until it was wasted and
gone.

It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday
procession of the Lancaster elders to
Church—all in black, and looking fearfully
like a funeral without the Body—under the
escort of Three Beadles.

"Think," said Francis, as he stood at the
Inn window, admiring, "of being taken to
the sacred edifice by three Beadles! I have,
in my early time, been taken out of it by one
Beadle; but, to be taken into it by three,
O Thomas, is a distinction I shall never
enjoy!"

THE SNOW EXPRESS.

MANY years ago, while a subaltern, I was
stationed at Blockhouse Point, at the mouth
of the Green Snake River, on the north side
of Lake Huron. This now dilapidated
stronghold was originally erected, on a sandy
point stretching out into the lake, in the days
of the Indian wars, and I could fancy its
slender garrison of sharpshooters watching
from their loopholes the clustering forms of
their Indian foes as they stole along the
borders of the forest. The bullet-holes that
riddled its massive walls, and its charred and
blackened surface, suggested grim conjectures
respecting its brave defenders who filled the
graves around its foot.