. Harpers' New York and Erie rail-road guide book .. . wouldshake his fist at Tom ; and then the skulls would grin,and skeleton thumbs would appear at their snubby skele-ton noses, and skeleton fingers would wag their rattlingjoints at him ; and then his fathers ghost would chantforth old hundred, and Tom would rush out, staggering,with his rifle, to return empty-handed, as usual. In thisway Tom has lived to be an old man, his energies wastedand his health impaired by the heavy thought of the non-execution of his fathers dying request. Like Hamlet, heis the victim of a false position—unequal,
. Harpers' New York and Erie rail-road guide book .. . wouldshake his fist at Tom ; and then the skulls would grin,and skeleton thumbs would appear at their snubby skele-ton noses, and skeleton fingers would wag their rattlingjoints at him ; and then his fathers ghost would chantforth old hundred, and Tom would rush out, staggering,with his rifle, to return empty-handed, as usual. In thisway Tom has lived to be an old man, his energies wastedand his health impaired by the heavy thought of the non-execution of his fathers dying request. Like Hamlet, heis the victim of a false position—unequal, though inclinedto accomplish the mission imposed upon him. With tho NEW YORK AND ERIE RAIL-ROAD. 93 sweet prince, he might rail against the cursed spite of being born to reduce the dislocated joints of his sires soul, and paraphrase his invective thus : Injuns are out of date ! Oh, cursed blunder,That I was born to make these skulls a hunder! Hankins (from New York 143 miles, from Dunkirk 317miles), seven miles beyond Calicoon, where we next stop,. is another secluded station, standing in a level plain mid-way across a bend in the Delaware. The business donehere, though, will undoubtedly increase. Half a mile thisside of Hankins the road runs along the base of a mountain,whose steep sides are swept entirely bare of trees, present-ing nothing but a mass of stumps and rocks, where the rat-tle-snake is found in myriads. This removal of the forestwas the few minutes work of a hurricane twenty yearsago ; and it is a pity that the same shaving process hasnot been extended to more of these bold peaks, for it is re-freshing to turn from the eternal green mounds skirtingour rivers to such a bluff, bald veteran as this fellow, thatflings his rocky outlines athwart the sky as though proudof his distinction above the common herd. We rejoin the Delaware at another of its numerous raft-ing stations. These signs of the lumber business are an 94 GUIDE-BOOK OF THE indispensable feature in the
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