The Rhode Island American, And General Advertiser

FROM THE NEW-BEDFORD MERCURY.

Through the politeness of a friend, we are enabled to present our readers with the following extract from Washington Irving's new work entitled "Bracebridge Hall."

It was a rainy Sunday, in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey, by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering, but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn! whoever has had the luck to experience one, can alone judge of my situation.

The rain pattered against the casements; the bells tolled for Church with a melancholy sound.

I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye; but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusements. The windows of my bed room looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys; while those of my sitting room commanded a full view of the stable yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw, that had been kicked about by travellers and stable boys; in one corner was a stagnant pool of water, surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowl, crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit; his drooping tail matted as it were into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back. Near the cart was a half-dozing cow chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog house, hard by, uttering something every now and then, between a bark and a yelp: a drab of kitchen wench, tramped backwards and forwards through the yard in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; every thing, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I was lonely and listless, and wanted amusement. My room soon became insupportable. I abandoned it and sought what is technically called the traveller's room. This is a publick room set apart at most inns for the accommodation of a class of wayfarers called travellers or riders; a kind of commercial knights errant, who are incessantly scouring the Kingdom in gigs, on horseback, or by coach. They are the only successors, that I know of at the present day, to the knights errant of yore.—They lead the same kind of roving adventurous life, only changing the lance for a whip, the buckler for a pattern card, and the coat of mail for an upper Benjamin. Instead of vindicating the charms of peerless beauty, they rove about spreading the fame and standing of some substantial tradesman or manufacturer, and are ready at any time to bargain in his name; it being the fashion now-a-days to trade instead of fighting with one another. As the room of the Hotel, in the good old fighting times, would be hung round at night with the armour of way-worn warriors, such as coats of mail, falchions, and yawning helmets; so the traveller's room is garnished with the harnessing of their successors; with box coats, whips of all kinds, spurs, gaiters, and oil cloth covered hats.

I was in hopes of finding some of these worthies to talk with, but was disappointed. There were, indeed, two or three in the room; but I could make nothing of them. One was just finishing his breakfast; quarrelling with his bread and butter, and huffing the waiter; another buttoned on a pair of gaiters, with many execrations at "Boots," for not having cleaned his shoes well; a third sat drumming on the table with his fingers and looking at the rain as it streamed down the window glass; they all appeared infected by the weather, and disappeared, one after the other, without exchanging a word.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high and dripping umbrellas. The bell ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite;—who, being confined to the house, for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows to fascinate the chance tenants of the Inn.—They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further from without to amuse me.

What was I to do, to pass away the long lived day? I was sadly nervous and lonely; and every thing about an Inn seems calculated to make a dull day ten times duller. Old newspapers smelling of beer and tobacco smoke, and which I had already read half a dozen times. Good for nothing books, that were worse than the rainy weather. I bored myself to death with an old volume of the Lady's Magazine. I read all the common placed names of ambitious travellers scrawled on panes of glass: the eternal families of the Smiths, and the Browns, and the Jacksons. and the Johnsons, and all the other sons; and I decyphered several scraps of fatiguing Inn-window poetry, that I have met with in all parts of the world.

The day continued lowering and gloomy : the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along in the air; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued. monotonous patter, patter, patter; excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage coach whirled through the street, with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas; and seated together, and reeking with the steams of wet box coats and upper Benjamins.

The sound brought out, from their lurking places a crew of vagabond boys, and vagabond dogs, with the carrotty headed hostler and that non-descript animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an Inn; but the bustle was transient; the coach again whirled on its way; and boy, and dog, and hostler, and Boots, all sunk back again to their holes; and the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on.

In fact there was no hope of its clearing up; the barometer pointed to rainy weather; mine hostess's tortoise-shell cat sat by the fire washing her face and rubbing her paws over her ears; and on referring to the almanack, I found a direful prediction stretching from the top of the page to the bottom through the whole month, "expect much rain about this time."

The evening gradually wore away. The travellers read the papers two or three times over; after which they one after another rang for "Boots" and the chambermaid, and walked up to bed in old shoes, cut down into marvellously uncomfortable slippers.

There was only one man left; a short legged, long-bodied plethoric fellow with a very sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port wine negus, and a spoon; sipping and stirring until nothing was left but the spoon.

He gradually fell asleep, bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber.

The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box coats of departed travellers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeping toper; and the drippings of the rain, drop-drop-drop. from the eaves of the house.