Harrisburg may be very pretty and interesting in fine weather, but it was a desolately dreary place to anticipate being snowed-up at in winter, although situated on the banks of the lovely Susquehana:  accordingly, I asked mine host when the next train would pass.  He replied, with grammatical accuracy, “It should pass about four to-morrow morning; but when it will I am puzzled to say.—­What’s your opinion, Colonel?” he added; and, turning round, I observed the distinguished military authority seated on one chair, and his legs gracefully pendent over the back of another.  In his sword-hand, he wielded a small clasp-knife, which did the alternate duty of a toothpick and a whittler,[K] for which latter amusement he kept a small stick in his left hand to operate upon; and the floor bore testimony to his untiring zeal.  When the important question was propounded to him, he ceased from his whittling labours, and, burying the blade deep between his ivories, looked out of the window with an authoritative air, apparently endeavouring, first, to ascertain what depth of snow was on the ground, and then, by an upward glance, to calculate how much more was likely to follow.  Having duly weighed these points, and having perfected the channel between his ivories, he sucked the friendly blade, and replied, with a stoical indifference—­which, considering my anxiety, might almost be styled heartless—­“I guess, if it goes on snowing like this, you’ll have no cars here to-morrow at all.”  Then, craning up to the heavens, as if seeking for the confirmation of a more terrible prophecy, he added, “By the looks of it, I think the gem’men may be fixed here for a week.”  Having delivered himself of the foregoing consolatory observation, and duly discharged a shower of Virginia juice on the floor, the military authority resumed his whittling labours with increased vigour.  His occupation involuntarily carried my mind across the water to a country-house, where I had so often seen an old blind friend amusing himself, by tearing up paper into small pieces, to make pillows for the poor.  If the gallant Colonel would only substitute this occupation for whittling, what good might he not do in Harrisburg!

I am happy to say that my Job’s comforter turned out a false prophet; snow soon gave place to sleet, and sleet to rain, and before midnight the muck was complete.  Next morning, at three, we got into the ’bus, and soon after four the cars came in, and we found ourselves once more en route for Pittsburg.  I think this was about the most disagreeable day’s journey I ever had.  The mixture of human and metallic heat, the chorus of infantine squallers—­who kept responding to one another from all parts of the car, like so many dogs in an eastern city—­and the intervals filled up by the hissing on the stove of the Virginia juice, were unpleasant enough; but even the elements combined against us.  The rain and the snow were fighting together, and producing that slushiness of