distiller’s and stole a copper measure containing a quantity of
liquor. He was pursued and taken with the property in his
possession, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. On
coming out of the jail, at the expiration of that term, he went
back to the same distiller’s, and stole the same copper measure
containing the same quantity of liquor. There was not the
slightest reason to suppose that the man wished to return to
prison: indeed everything, but the commission of the offence, made
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
directly against that assumption. There are only two ways of
accounting for this extraordinary proceeding. One is, that after
undergoing so much for this copper measure he conceived he had
established a sort of claim and right to it. The other that, by
dint of long thinking about, it had become a monomania with him,
and had acquired a fascination which he found it impossible to
resist; swelling from an Earthly Copper Gallon into an Ethereal
Golden Vat.
After remaining here a couple of days I bound myself to a rigid
adherence to the plan I had laid down so recently, and resolved to
set forward on our western journey without any more delay.
Accordingly, having reduced the luggage within the smallest
possible compass (by sending back to New York, to be afterwards
forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as was not absolutely
wanted); and having procured the necessary credentials to bankinghouses
on the way; and having moreover looked for two evenings at
the setting sun, with as well-defined an idea of the country before
us as if we had been going to travel into the very centre of that
planet; we left Baltimore by another railway at half-past eight in
the morning, and reached the town of York, some sixty miles off, by
the early dinner-time of the Hotel which was the starting-place of
the four-horse coach, wherein we were to proceed to Harrisburg.
This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough to secure,
had come down to meet us at the railroad station, and was as muddy
and cumbersome as usual. As more passengers were waiting for us at
the inn-door, the coachman observed under his breath, in the usual
self-communicative voice, looking the while at his mouldy harness
as if it were to that he was addressing himself,
‘I expect we shall want THE BIG coach.’
I could not help wondering within myself what the size of this big
coach might be, and how many persons it might be designed to hold;
for the vehicle which was too small for our purpose was something
larger than two English heavy night coaches, and might have been
the twin-brother of a French Diligence. My speculations were
speedily set at rest, however, for as soon as we had dined, there
came rumbling up the street, shaking its sides like a corpulent
giant, a kind of barge on wheels. After much blundering and
backing, it stopped at the door: rolling heavily from side to side
when its other motion had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its
damp stable, and between that, and the having been required in its
dropsical old age to move at any faster pace than a walk, were
distressed by shortness of wind.
‘If here ain’t the Harrisburg mail at last, and dreadful bright and
smart to look at too,’ cried an elderly gentleman in some
excitement, ‘darn my mother!’
I don’t know what the sensation of being darned may be, or whether
a man’s mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the process than
anybody else; but if the endurance of this mysterious ceremony by
the old lady in question had depended on the accuracy of her son’s
vision in respect to the abstract brightness and smartness of the
Harrisburg mail, she would certainly have undergone its infliction.
However, they booked twelve people inside; and the luggage
(including such trifles as a large rocking-chair, and a good-sized
dining-table) being at length made fast upon the roof, we started
off in great state.
At the door of another hotel, there was another passenger to be