“—­Having bought out the valuable rights of young Master James Howard in this Line, the subscriber will streak it daily between Perry and Geneseo, for the conveyance of Uncle Sam’s Mails and Family; leaving Perry before the Crows wake up in the morning, and arriving at the first house on this side Geneseo about the same time; returning, leave Geneseo after the Crows have gone to roost, and reach Perry in time to join them.  Passengers will please to keep their mouths shut for fear they should lose their teeth.  No Smoking allowed for fear of fretting the Horses; no Talking lest it wake the Driver.  Fare to suit passengers.

  “The public’s very much obliged servant, &c. &c.”

A quiet and simple stage of rough wood was put up at one end of the village, close to the Court-house, from whence the Declaration of Independence was read, after which a flowery orator—­summoned for the occasion, and who travels about to different villages in different years with his well-digested oration—­addressed the multitude.  Of course similes and figures of rhetoric were lugged in by the heels in every sentence, as is the all but universal practice on such occasions in every part of the world.  The moral of his speech was in the main decidedly good, and he urged upon his audience strongly, “the undying advantages of cultivating pluck and education” in preference to “dollars and shrewdness.”  All went off in a very orderly manner, and in the evening there were fireworks and a village ball.  It was at once a wild and interesting sight during the fireworks; the mixture of men, women, and children, some walking, some carried, some riding, some driving; empty buggies, some with horses, some without, tied all round; stray dogs looking for masters as hopelessly as old maids seeking for their spectacles when raised above their eyes and forgotten.  Fire companies parading ready for any emergency; the son of mine host tugging away at the rope of the engine in his red shirt, like a juvenile Atlas, as proud as Lucifer, as pleased as Punch.  All busy, all excited, all happy; no glimpse of poverty to mar the scene; all come with one voice and one heart to celebrate the glorious anniversary of the birth of a nation, whose past gigantic strides, unparalleled though they be, are insufficient to enable any mind to realize what future is in store for her, if she only prove true to herself.

Leave-takings do not interest the public, so the reader will be satisfied to know that two days after found me in an open carriage on my way to Rochester.  The road lay entirely through cultivated land, and had no peculiar features.  The only thing I saw worth noticing, was two men in a light four-wheel one-horse shay, attached to which were at least a dozen others, some on two wheels, some on four.  I of course thought they were some country productions going to a city manufacturer.  What was my astonishment at finding upon inquiry, that it was merely an American phase of hawking.  The driver told me that these people will go away from home for weeks together, trying to sell their novel ware at hamlet, village, farm-house, &c., and that some of the shrewdest of them, the genuine Sam Slick breed, manage to make a good thing of it.