The
stage agent demanding the names of those who are going on,--some to
Lebanon Springs, some to Albany. The toddy-stick is still busy at these
Berkshire public-houses. At dinner soup preliminary, in city style.
Guests: the court people; Briggs, member of Congress, attending a trial
here; horse-dealers, country squires, store-keepers in the village, etc.
My room, a narrow crib overlooking a back court-yard, where a young man
and a lad were drawing water for the maid-servants,--their jokes,
especially those of the lad, of whose wit the elder fellow, being a
blockhead himself, was in great admiration, and declared to another that
he knew as much as them both. Yet he was not very witty. Once in a
while the maid-servants would come to the door, and hear and respond to
their jokes, with a kind of restraint, yet both permitting and enjoying
them.
After or about sunset there was a heavy shower, the thunder rumbling
round and round the mountain wall, and the clouds stretching from rampart
to rampart. When it abated, the clouds in all parts of the visible
heavens were tinged with glory from the west; some that hung low being
purple and gold, while the higher ones were gray.
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