Danforth Marble
THE HOOSIER AND THE SALT-PILE
"I'm sorry," says Dan, as he knocked the ashes from his regalia, as he sat in a small crowd over a glass of sherry at Florence's, New York, one evening. "I'm sorry that the stages are disappearing so rapidly; I never enjoyed traveling so well as in the slow coaches. I've made a good many passages over the Alleghanies, and across Ohio, from Cleveland to Columbus and Cincinnati, all over the South, down East, and up North, in stages, and I generally had a good time.
"When I passed over from Cleveland to Cincinnati, the last time, in a stage, I met a queer crowd—such a corps, such a time you never did see; I never was better amused in my life. We had a good team— spanking horses, fine coaches, and one of them drivers you read of. Well, there was nine 'insiders,' and I don't believe there ever was a stageful of Christians ever started before so chuck full of music.
"There was a beautiful young lady going to one of the Cincinnati academies; next to her sat a Jew peddler—for Cowes and a market; wedging him in was a dandy blackleg, with jewelry and chains around his breast and neck—enough to hang him. There was myself and an old gentleman with large spectacles, gold-headed cane, and a jolly, soldiering-iron-looking nose; by him was a circus rider whose breath was enough to breed yaller fever and could be felt just as easy as cotton velvet! A cross old woman came next, and whose look would have given any reasonable man the double-breasted blues before breakfast; alongside of her was a rale backwoods preacher, with the biggest and ugliest mouth ever got up since the flood. He was flanked by the low comedian of the party, an Indiana Hoosier, 'gwine down to Orleans to get an army contract' to supply the forces then in Mexico with beef.
"We rolled along for some time; nobody seemed inclined to 'open.' The old aunty sot bolt upright, looking crab-apples and persimmons at the Hoosier and the preacher; the young lady dropped the green curtain of her bonnet over her pretty face, and leaned back in her seat, to nod and dream over japonicas and jumbles, pantalettes and poetry; the old gentleman, proprietor of the Bardolph 'nose,' looked out at the 'corduroy' and swashes; the gambler fell off into a doze, and the circus covey followed suit, leaving the preacher and me vis-a-vis and saying nothing to nobody. 'Indiany,' he stuck his mug out at the window and criticized the cattle we now and then passed. I was wishing somebody would give the conversation a start, when 'Indiany' made a break:
"'This ain't no great stock country,' says he to the old gentleman with the cane.
"'No, sir,' was the reply. 'There's very little grazing here; the range is nearly wore out.'
"Then there was nothing said again for some time. Bimeby the Hoosier opened again:
"'It's the d——est place for 'simmon trees and turkey buzzards I ever did see!'