Be that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in
a fair way to expiate it by his night's penance. There had been a long
continuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of Ohio, as
every one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of mud--and the
road was an Ohio railroad of the good old times.

"And pray, what sort of a road may that be?" says some eastern
traveller, who has been accustomed to connect no ideas with a railroad,
but those of smoothness or speed.

Know, then, innocent eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the
west, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made
of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over
in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to
hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway
essayeth to ride thereupon. In process of time, the rains wash off
all the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs hither and thither, in
picturesque positions, up, down and crosswise, with divers chasms and
ruts of black mud intervening.

Over such a road as this our senator went stumbling along, making
moral reflections as continuously as under the circumstances could be
expected,--the carriage proceeding along much as follows,--bump! bump!
bump! slush! down in the mud!--the senator, woman and child, reversing
their positions so suddenly as to come, without any very accurate
adjustment, against the windows of the down-hill side. Carriage sticks
fast, while Cudjoe on the outside is heard making a great muster among
the horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as
the senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights