TAKING TOLL.
A gentleman of an autobiographic turn relates how he was instructed in the custom of taking toll, by a sprightly widow, during a moonlight sleigh-ride with a merry party. He says:
The lively widow L. sat in the same sleigh, under the same buffalo-robe, with me.
“Oh! oh! don’t, don’t!” she exclaimed, as we came to the first bridge, at the same time catching me by the arm and turning her veiled face towards me, while her little eyes twinkled through the moonlight.
“Don’t what?” I asked. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Well, but I thought you were going to take toll,” replied the widow.
“Toll!” I rejoined. “What’s that?”
“Well, I declare!” cried the widow, her clear laugh ringing out above the music of the bells, “you pretend you don’t know what toll is!”
“Indeed I don’t, then,” I said, laughing; “explain, if you please.”
“You never heard, then,” said the widow, most provokingly,—“you never heard that when we are on a sleigh-ride the gentlemen always,—that is, sometimes,—when they cross a bridge, claim a kiss, and call it toll. But I never pay it.”