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Various

"The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.)"

When
you are packed, three on one narrow seat, in a Jersey stage, it is
necessary.
A Jersey stage! It is not on record, but when Dante winds up his Tenth
"Canter" into the Inferno with--
Each, as his back was laden, came indeed
Or more or less contracted; and it seemed
As he who showed most patience in his look,
Wailing, exclaimed, "I can endure no more!"
the conclusion that he alluded to a crowded Jersey stage-load is
irresistible. A man with long legs, on a back seat, in one of these
vehicles, suffers like a snipe shut up in a snuff-box. For this reason,
the long-legged man should sit on the front seat with the driver; there,
like the hen-turkey who tried to sit on a hundred eggs, he can "spread
himself." The writer sat alongside the driver one morning, just at break
of day, as the stage drove out of Blackberry: he was a through passenger
to Squash Point. It was a very cold morning. In order to break the ice
for a conversation, he praised the fine points of an off horse. The
driver thawed:
"Ya-as; she's a goot hoss, und I knows how to trive him!" It was
evidently a case of mixed breed.


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