sincerity of intention with felicity of execution."
A NIGHT AT WINGDAM.
I had been stage-ridden and bewildered all day, and when we swept down
with the darkness into the Arcadian hamlet of "Wingdam," I resolved
to go no farther, and rolled out in a gloomy and dyspeptic state. The
effects of a mysterious pie, and some sweetened carbonic acid known
to the proprietor of the "Half-Way House" as "lemming sody," still
oppressed me. Even the facetiae of the gallant expressman who knew
everybody's Christian name along the route, who rained letters,
newspapers, and bundles from the top of the stage, whose legs frequently
appeared in frightful proximity to the wheels, who got on and off while
we were going at full speed, whose gallantry, energy, and superior
knowledge of travel crushed all us other passengers to envious silence,
and who just then was talking with several persons and manifestly doing
something else at the same time,--even this had failed to interest me.
So I stood gloomily, clutching my shawl and carpet-bag, and watched the
stage roll away, taking a parting look at the gallant expressman as he
hung on the top rail with one leg, and lit his cigar from the pipe of a
running footman. I then turned toward the Wingdam Temperance Hotel.
It may have been the weather, or it may have been the pie, but I was not
impressed favorably with the house. Perhaps it was the name extending
the whole length of the building, with a letter under each window,
making the people who looked out dreadfully conspicuous. Perhaps it was
that "Temperance" always suggested to my mind rusks and weak tea. It was
uninviting. It might have been called the "Total Abstinence" Hotel,
from the lack of anything to intoxicate or inthrall the senses. It was
designed with an eye to artistic dreariness. It was so much too large
for the settlement, that it appeared to be a very slight improvement
on out-doors. It was unpleasantly new. There was the forest flavor of
dampness about it, and a slight spicing of pine. Nature outraged,
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