We embarked in the “Lady Franklin,” and were soon “floating down the river of the O-hi-o.”  The banks are undulating, and prettily interspersed with cottage villas, which peep out from the woods, and are clotted about the more cultivated parts; but, despite this, the dreary mantle of winter threw a cold churlishness over everything.  The boat I shall describe hereafter, when I have seen more of them, for their general features are the same; but there was a specimen of the fair sex on board, to whom I must introduce you, as I may never see her like again.

The main piece was the counterpart of a large steamer’s funnel cut off at about four feet two inches high, a most perfect cylinder, and of a dark greyish hue:  a sombre coloured riband supported a ditto coloured apron.  If asked where this was fastened, I suppose she would have replied, “Round the waist, to be sure;” yet, if Lord Rosse’s telescope had been applied, no such break in the smooth surface of the cylinder could have been descried.  The arms hung down on either side like the funnel of a cabin stove, exciting the greatest wonder and the liveliest curiosity to know how the skin of the shoulder obtained the elasticity requisite to exhibit such a phenomenon.  On the top of the cylinder was a beautifully polished ebony pedestal, about two inches high on one side, tapering away to nothing at the other, so that whatever might be placed thereon, would lie at an angle of forty-five degrees.  This pedestal did duty for a neck; and upon it was placed a thing which, viewed as a whole, resembled a demijohn.  The lower part was pillowed on the cylinder, no gleam of light ever penetrating between the two.  Upon the upper surface, at a proper distance from the extremity, two lips appeared, very like two pieces of raw beefsteak picked up off a dusty road.

While wrapt in admiration of this interesting spot, the owner thereof was seized with a desire to yawn, to obtain which luxury it was requisite to throw back the demijohn into nearly a horizontal line, so as to relieve the lower end from its pressure on the cylinder.  The aid of both hands was called in to assist in supporting her intellectual depository.  This feat accomplished, a roseate gulf was revealed, which would have made the stout heart of Quintus Curtius quail ere he took the awful plunge.  Time or contest had removed the ivory obstructions in the centre, but the shores on each side of the gulf were terrifically iron-bound, and appeared equal to crushing the hardest granite; the shinbone of an ox would have been to her like an oyster to ordinary mortals.  She revelled in this luxurious operation so long, that I began to fear she was suffering from the antipodes to a lockjaw, and that she was unable to close the chasm; but at last the demijohn rose slowly and solemnly from the horizontal, the gulf gradually closed until, obtaining the old angle of forty-five degrees, the two dusty pieces of beefsteak once more stood sentry over the