112 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



was nothing to tempt him to stay at Burlington, he took 

 his place in the stage-coach, a rough sort of leathern 

 diligence, which carried a third seat hung transversely 

 between the front and back seats. A middle-aged woman 

 occupied one seat, and Gosse the other, and thus they 

 spent the night, swinging dully along the frozen road with- 

 out a word passing between them. In the middle of the 

 night, at some village where the concern changed horses, 

 Philip Gosse got out for some refreshment ; dizzy with 

 broken sleep, he laid his purse down on the bar counter, 

 with seven dollars in it, and stumbled back to the coach 

 without perceiving his loss. The uncouth stage-coach dis- 

 gorged him at Albany in the quiet of an early Sunday 

 morning. He instantly embarked ^on the steamer, and was 

 running all that day down the beautiful ranges of the 

 Hudson. But curiosity was almost as dead in him as hope. 

 He spoke to no one on board, he formed no plans and 

 took no observations ; only at the Palisades he woke up to 

 some perception of the noble precipices under which they 

 were passing. He had not even the wretched excitement 

 of examining the shattered contents of his insect cabinet, 

 for the stage-coach had peremptorily refused to take that 

 piece of furniture on board, and it had been left at 

 Burlington. 



In the evening he reached New York, landed on a 

 crowded wharf, and in Liberty Street, the nearest thorough- 

 fare, sought out a sordid hole, in which he took one night's 

 lodging and shelter for his boxes. He made no attempt 

 to explore New York. His slender pittance was fast melt- 

 ing away, and he had many a league to traverse yet 

 before he could hope, in ever so slight a measure, to recruit 

 it. In the morning, therefore, without going up a single 

 street, he steamed across the broad Hudson, and took the 

 railway, the first he had ever seen, across the flat sands 



