It is but a dreary ride to Lake George on a dark and rainy evening, unless
people like riding for its own sake, as I do. If there are suns and stars
and skies, very well. If there are not, very well too: I like to ride all
the same. I like everything in this world but Saratoga. Once or twice our
monotony was broken up by short halts before country-inns. At one an
excitement was going on. "Had a casualty here this afternoon," remarked a
fresh passenger, as soon as he was fairly seated. A casualty is a windfall
to a country-village. It is really worth while to have a head broken
occasionally, for the wholesome stirring-up it gives to the heads that are
not broken. On the whole, I question whether collisions and collusions do
not cause as much good as harm. Certainly, people seem to take the most
lively satisfaction in receiving and imparting all the details concerning
them. Our passenger-friend opened his budget with as much complacence as
ever did Mr. Gladstone or Disraeli, and with a confident air of knowing
that he was going not only to enjoy a piece of good-fortune himself, but
to administer a great gratification to us. Our "casualty" turned out to be
the affair of a Catholic priest, of which our informer spoke only in dark
hints and with significant shoulder-shrugs and eyebrow-elevations, because
it was "not exactly the thing to get out, you know"; but if it wasn't to
get out, why did he let it out? and so from my dark corner I watched him
as a cat does a mouse, and the lamp-light shone full upon him, and I
understood every word and shrug, and I am going to tell it all to the
world. I translated that the holy father had been "skylarking" in a boat,
and in gay society had forgotten his vows of frugality and abstinence and
general mortification of the flesh, and had become, not very drunk, but
drunk enough to be dangerous, when he came ashore and took a horse in his
hands, and so upset his carriage, and gashed his temporal artery, and came
to grief, which is such a casualty as does not happen every day, and I
don't blame people for making the most of it. Then the moral was pointed,