第52章

Yoho, past streams, in which the cattle cool their feet, and where the rushes grow; past paddock-fences, farms, and rickyards.; past last year's stacks, cut, slice by slice, away, and showing, in the waning light, like ruined gables, odd and brown.Yoho, down the pebbly dip, and through the merry watersplash, and up at a canter to the level road again.Yoho! Yoho!

Yoho, among the gathering shades; making of no account the deep reflections of the trees, but scampering on through light and darkness, all the same, as if the light of London fifty miles away were quite enough totravel by, and some to spare.Yoho, beside the village green, where cricket players linger yet, and every little indentation made in the fresh grass by bat or wicket, ball or player's foot, sheds out its perfume on the night.And then a sudden brief halt at the door of a strange inn--the "Bald-faced Stag"--an exchange of greetings, a new passenger, a change of teams.

III.

Away with four fresh horses from the Bald-faced Stag, where the village idlers congregate about the door admiring; and the last team, with traces hanging loose, go roaming off toward the pond, until observed and shouted after by a dozen throats, while volunteering boys pursue them.Now, with a clattering of hoofs and striking out of fiery sparks, across the old stone bridge, and down again into the shadowy road, and through the open gate, and far away, away, into the word.Yoho!

See the bright moon! High up before we know it: making the earth reflect the objects on its breast like water.Hedges, trees, low cottages, church steeples, blighted stumps, and flourishing young slips, have all grown vain upon the sudden, and mean to contemplate their own fair images till morning.

The poplars yonder rustle, that their quivering leaves may see themselves upon the ground.Not so the oak; trembling does not become him; and he watches himself in his stout old burly steadfastness, without the motion of a twig.But, leaving oaks and poplars to their own devices, the stage moves swiftly on, while the moon keeps even pace with it, gliding over ditch and brake, upon the plowed land and the smooth, along the steep hillside and steeper wall, as if it were a phantom Hunter.

Clouds too! And a mist upon the hollow! Not a dull fog that hides it, but a light airy gauzelike mist, which in our eyes of modest admiration gives a new charm to the beauties it is spread before.Yoho! Why now we travel like the moon herself.Hiding this minute in a grove of trees; next minute in a patch of vapor; emerging now upon our clear broad course; withdrawing now, but always dashing on, our journey is a counterpart of hers.Yoho! A match against the moon!

The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when Day comes leaping up.

Yoho! Two stages, and the country roads are almost changed to a continuous street.Yoho, past market gardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and squares; past wagons, coaches, carts; past early workmen, late stragglers, and sober carriers of loads; past brick and mortar in its every shape; and in among the rattling pavements, where a jaunty seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve! Yoho, down countless turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until an old innyard is gained, and Tom Pinch, getting down, quite stunned and giddy, is in London!

--Adapted from "Martin Chuzzlewit."

DEFINITIONS:--Swells, self-important personages.Guard, conductor.Legacy, something left by will.Boot, a place for baggage at either end of a stagecoach.Dip, slope.Dowager, an English title for widow.