"So your book of travels is just to put yourself into pickle."
"Say rather," I answered, with sweet humility,—"say rather it is to shrine myself in amber. As the insignificant fly, encompassed with molten glory, passes into a crystallized immortality, his own littleness uplifted into loveliness by the beauty in which he is imprisoned, so I, wrapped around by the glory of my land, may find myself niched into a fame which my unattended and naked merit could never have claimed."
Halicarnassus was a little stunned, but, presently recovering himself, suggested that I had travelled enough already to make out quite a sizable book.
"Travelled!" I said, looking him steadily in the face,—"travelled! I have been up to Tudiz huckleberrying; and once, when there was a freshet, you took a superannuated broom and paddled me, around the orchard in a leaky pig's trough!"
He could not deny it; so he laughed and said,—
"Ah, well!—ah, well! Suit yourself. Take your trunk and pitch into
Vesuvius, if you like. I won't stand in your way."
His acquiescence was ungraciously, and I believe I may say ambiguously, expressed; but it mattered little, for in three days from that time I took my trunk, Halicarnassus his cane, and we started on our travels. An evil omen met us at the beginning. Just as I was stepping into the car, I observed a violent smoke issuing from under it. I started back in alarm.
"They are only getting up steam," said Halicarnassus. "Always do, when they start."
"I know better!" I answered briskly, for there was no time to be circumlocutional. "They don't get up steam under the cars."
"Why not? Bet a sixpence you couldn't get Uncle Cain's dobbin out of his jog-trot without building a fire under him."