OBSTINACY NOT ALWAYS WRONG.

71

rica, the corruption of animal matter is much more rapid, in summer especially, than with us; so that they are obliged to have the bodies of the dead sooner disposed of. He assured me he lay in a kind of trance, having a dreamy kind of consciousness of all that was passing around him, for more than thirty hours. The village doctor, and all his neighbours, with one exception, thought him dead. This last was his most intimate friend, and had been his schoolfellow. The man had his doubts ; although, as he declared afterwards, he scarce knew why; he owned all appearances were against the notion that he had so firmly taken up. Meantime, the others laughed him to scorn, when he obstinately persisted in not allowing the supposed defunct to be inclosed for burial. The coffin was prepared, and the patient's friend about to give way, when the body showed unequivocal outward signs of animation-inward consciousness the patient had never lost for a moment; he was not aware even of having slept. I asked him if he had been perfectly acquainted with what was going on about him. He positively declared he had; but that his sensations were all passive. heard them talk of his funeral, and discuss the particulars; he listened to the remonstrances with his friend, his answers, and every thing that passed on the occasion; but although he knew it was all about him, and concerned him so nearly, he did not feel as if he had the desire, much less the power, to get up and interfere! I had read of some remarkable cases

He

72

TOWN OF NASSAU.

A

of this sort, as narrated in books; but never fell in with any one whose personal experience could confirm or contradict their existence, till I fell in with the driver of the stage between Albany and Nassau.

A PERTINACIOUS BORE.

73

LETTER VII.

NEW LEBANON SPRINGS-THE SHAKERS.

AT Nassau, two miles from New Lebanon, we changed our driver. As I did not like his appearance quite so well as that of my "dead alive," I got inside, where I encountered an elderly man, with a gruff voice, who I could only see was fat, and who annoyed me greatly with questions, whether I was

a traveller, or a clergyman, or a merchant, or a mechanic, or❞—I stopped him here, thinking he might go even lower in his conjectures as to what I might be, and said to him, "My good sir, just imagine that I am nothing at all—that I am nobody." I was not aware, at that time, that the term " mechanic has a different meaning there than with us: it is generally applied to master tradesmen in different callings, especially workers in metal, such as machinists, brass-founders, and the like; also to engineers, railroad-contractors, &c. This man, whose property he said lay near, soon got down and left us. I was not sorry for his absence. I could have been glad that he had left his daughter behind him, who was a well-spoken young lady; whether her person were as agreeable as her conversation, I cannot say.

74

AN UNEXPECTED SCENE

The watering-place, called New Lebanon Springs, is built on the top of a hill, of gentle ascent. It is composed of a bathing-house, and three very extensive and stately taverns, forming a kind of square; its conspicuous position upon a hill, like "a city that cannot be hid," at a distance, with the hundred shifting lights in the windows, gave it the appearance of some illuminated palace in a theatrical scene; a comparison that was still further helped by the sounds of music and revelry which fell upon the ear as we approached it. Having taken up my quarters at one of the taverns, I found myself in the midst of the gayest company I had yet mixed with in America. It is a resort for many invalids to get rid of cutaneous and other diseases, in the first of which the waters are said to be very useful; but a much greater number repair thither to shake off the spleen, or idlers, who merely come to kill time. It is, in short, a place of innocent dissipation. Although not of the gayest turn of mind myself, I have always been, like Goldsmith's Doctor Primrose, an admirer of happy faces; and here there was a freedom of intercourse, a forgetfulness of the cares of life, an oblivion of its distinctions, all reigning about this charming spot, which it was quite delightful to meet with, and what I hardly expected to find, and indeed never did find afterward, in any part of America. Numbers of the young ladies-some with their parents, but mostly with their sweethearts-tired with much dancing in the concert-room, were walking about the grounds,

pleasantly laid out garden-fashion, in the centre area of the buildings; the stoup or colonnade in front of the taverns had rows of chairs for gentlemen; and there sat the latter smoking, discussing lightsomely their own affairs or those of the nation, and all the world enjoying itself in its own way. But the telltale moonlight, which shone bright over all, showed me lady arms twined round favoured necks, with a most loving simplicity that thought no ill. These pairs moved about jauntily, keeping time in their steps to the cadence of imaginary music, the instruments having now ceased. It grew late, but no one seemed to think of going to rest: how could they, and leave such a bright shining moon behind! Although I have been, in my time, rather scurvily treated by many individuals of my species, there have been moments when my heart has swelled within me with such an expansion of love to human kind, that I thought I could lodge the whole race within its core: such a feeling as this did I experience, for instance, when the French people showed such heroism in combat with so much moderation after victory in the early days of their last Revolution. But the subsequent conduct of many of them made the heart, thus expanded, soon contract again. It was then I first got acquainted with the delicious sentiment of LOYALTY, a feeling quite new to me; and which, if only inferior in strength to the love of woman, is much purer in its nature. Let Louis Philippe have been an intriguing usurper or not, he was a man whose talents and general character,