The hotel at New Glasgow we can commend as one of the most unwholesome in the Province; but it is unnecessary to emphasize its condition, for if the traveler is in search of dirty hotels, he will scarcely go amiss anywhere in these regions.There seems to be a fashion in diet which endures.The early travelers as well as the later in these Atlantic provinces all note the prevalence of dry, limp toast and green tea; they are the staples of all the meals;though authorities differ in regard to the third element for discouraging hunger: it is sometimes boiled salt-fish and sometimes it is ham.Toast was probably an inspiration of the first woman of this part of the New World, who served it hot; but it has become now a tradition blindly followed, without regard to temperature; and the custom speaks volumes for the non-inventiveness of woman.At the inn in New Glasgow those who choose dine in their shirt-sleeves, and those skilled in the ways of this table get all they want in seven minutes.A man who understands the use of edged tools can get along twice as fast with a knife and fork as he can with a fork alone.
But the stage is at the door; the coach and four horses answer the advertisement of being "second to none on the continent." We mount to the seat with the driver.The sun is bright; the wind is in the southwest; the leaders are impatient to go; the start for the long ride is propitious.
But on the back seat in the coach is the inevitable woman, young and sickly, with the baby in her arms.The woman has paid her fare through to Guysborough, and holds her ticket.It turns out, however, that she wants to go to the district of Guysborough, to St.Mary's Cross Roads, somewhere in it, and not to the village of Guysborough, which is away down on Chedabucto Bay.(The reader will notice this geographical familiarity.) And this stage does not go in the direction of St.Mary's.She will not get out, she will not surrender her ticket, nor pay her fare again.Why should she? And the stage proprietor, the stage-driver, and the hostler mull over the problem, and sit down on the woman's hair trunk in front of the tavern to reason with her.The baby joins its voice from the coach window in the clamor of the discussion.The baby prevails.The stage company comes to a compromise, the woman dismounts, and we are off, away from the white houses, over the sandy road, out upon a hilly and not cheerful country.And the driver begins to tell us stories of winter hardships, drifted highways, a land buried in snow, and great peril to men and cattle.
III
"It was then summer, and the weather very fine; so pleased was I with the country, in which I had never travelled before, that my delight proved equal to my wonder."--BENVENUTO CELLINI.
There are few pleasures in life equal to that of riding on the box-seat of a stagecoach, through a country unknown to you and hearing the driver talk about his horses.We made the intimate acquaintance of twelve horses on that day's ride, and learned the peculiar disposition and traits of each one of them, their ambition of display, their sensitiveness to praise or blame, their faithfulness, their playfulness, the readiness with which they yielded to kind treatment, their daintiness about food and lodging.
May I never forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in the third stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish, mincing mare of Marshy Hope.A spoiled beauty she was; you could see that as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty head about, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up "in any simple knot,"--like the back hair of Shelley's Beatrice Cenci.How she ambled and sidled and plumed herself, and now and then let fly her little heels high in air in mere excess of larkish feeling.
"So! girl; so! Kitty," murmurs the driver in the softest tones of admiration; "she don't mean anything by it, she's just like a kitten."But the heels keep flying above the traces, and by and by the driver is obliged to "speak hash" to the beauty.The reproof of the displeased tone is evidently felt, for she settles at once to her work, showing perhaps a little impatience, jerking her head up and down, and protesting by her nimble movements against the more deliberate trot of her companion.I believe that a blow from the cruel lash would have broken her heart; or else it would have made a little fiend of the spirited creature.The lash is hardly ever good for the sex.
For thirteen years, winter and summer, this coachman had driven this monotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills, scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight.What a time to nurse his thought and feed on his heart! How deliberately he can turn things over in his brain! What a system of philosophy he might evolve out of his consciousness! One would think so.But, in fact, the stagebox is no place for thinking.To handle twelve horses every day, to keep each to its proper work, stimulating the lazy and restraining the free, humoring each disposition, so that the greatest amount of work shall be obtained with the least friction, making each trip on time, and so as to leave each horse in as good condition at the close as at the start, taking advantage of the road, refreshing the team by an occasional spurt of speed,--all these things require constant attention; and if the driver was composing an epic, the coach might go into the ditch, or, if no accident happened, the horses would be worn out in a month, except for the driver's care.
