Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

[201] the people were glad to lay down their loads and take a little refreshment, while the happy man whose lot it was to carry the jug of rum, began already, like Esop's bread-carriers, to find it grow a good deal lighter.

17th .... Since the surveyors had entered the Dismal they had laid eyes on no living creature; neither bird nor beast, insect nor reptile came in view. Doubtless the eternal shade that broods over this mighty bog, and hinders the sunbeams from blessing the ground, makes it an uncomfortable habitation for anything that has life. Not so much as a Zealand frog could endure so aguish a situation. It had one beauty, however, that delighted the eye, though at the expense of all the other senses: the moisture of the soil preserves a continual verdure, and makes every plant an evergreen, but at the same time the foul damps ascend without ceasing, corrupt the air, and render it unfit for respiration. Not even a turkey buzzard will venture to fly over it, no more than the Italian vultures will over the filthy lake Avernus or the birds in the holy land over the salt sea where Sodom and Gomorrah formerly stood.

In these sad circumstances tlre kindliest thing we could do for our suffering friends was to give them a place in the Litany. Our chaplain for his part did his office, and rubbed us up with a seasonable sermon. This was quite a new thing to our brethren of North Carolina, who live in a climate where no clergyman can breathe, any more than spiders in Ireland.

It is impossible to read this and not recognize in every sentence the jaunty, manofthe-worldly, almost patrician air with which this