The very sea some day may try
      To climb the mountain side,
    And hill-folks yet be staggered by
      THE MOANING OF THE TIED.

* * * * *

OUR PORTFOLIO.

By Diligence from Paris to Versailles—­Fastest Time on Record—­Happy
Travelling Companions—­Mud, Misery, and Malignity—­Life on the Road.

NEAR ST. CLOUD, NINTH WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.

It would have done you good to see us getting over that muddy, jagged, rutty old turnpike that leads off from the south of the Bois de Boulogne toward St. Cloud and Versailles.  Since writing my last, I had been to Paris par ballon monte, and was now returning in the diligence that took five American ladies and a couple of war correspondents, all friends of WASHBURNE, away from the temptation of eating horse-flesh in the beleaguered city, to such edibles as the rapacity of the German appetite had left undevoured in the neighborhood of the old “stamping grounds” of Louis XVI.  We were not a jolly party.  It rained in torrents, and our little driver perched upon the box in front smoked the most infernal tobacco I ever smelt.  Moreover, the horses were not lively steeds.  They were rather safe than otherwise, and not given to running away.  Although the driver addressed himself to their flanks, between each puff of smoke, with a pointed stick, they didn’t rear and plunge so as to frighten the ladies, and that was a point gained, albeit we had leisure to count the pickets in the fences as we dragged toward our destination.  One of our lady passengers came from Connecticut, and she talked with a nutmeg dialect that made her garrulity oftentimes quite spicy.  We two sat back to back, and when the vehicle lurched heavily her chignon took me “amidships” (if I may be permitted the expression) with a concussion that felt like the impact of a muffled ball from a six-pound field howitzer.  “Goodness gracious, dew git eout of the way and give me some room, man!” she would exclaim as our wagon plunged into a three-foot “gore” and the coachee plied his pointed ramrod with increased vigor to the attenuated haunches of the insensible beasts.

“My dear madam, you will perceive that I cannot ‘git’ any further without climbing upon the back of my companion in front.”  Lord knows I would have given a hundred francs to be out of her reach; but we had been all ticketed and labelled through under the same “pass,” and there was no such thing as dissolving partnership now.

“Ugh!” she muttered, putting her handkerchief to her nose, “and that horrid smoke too!” But the imperturbable director of our flight took no heed, and drew away at his clay idol with unabated satisfaction.  ’Twas thus we jogged on for five weary hours, “OLD CONNECTICUT” charging head foremost at my spinal column with a frequency and momentum that made me believe, finally, she did it on purpose.  Three miles out from St. Cloud we found the road completely blocked up with artillery wagons, and saw large masses of troops moving through the fields on either side.  It still rained incessantly, and the forlornness of the situation was no wise relieved by the distant booming of guns, and the sucking sound of the wheels in the mud.