Wagon

“ We found an old horse running about, which seemed to be ownerless, and an abandoned wagon, and proposed to take our journey with the aid of these, in faint remembrance of days of peace, when the wagon trundled over smooth roads, grass-lined, and wound in dusty quiet by the habitations of civilization. ”

“ It is a brave sight and fortifying to see a Supply Column winding in and out between the poplars on the perilously arched pavé of the long sinuous roads, each wagon keeping its distance, like battleships in line, and every one of them boasting a good Christian name chalked up on the tail-board. For what his horses are to a driver and his eighteen-pounder to a gunner, such is his wagon to the A.S.C. man who is detailed to it. ”

“ The mention of a name or two, perhaps; the rattle of a wagon along a dusty road; the rank, resinous smell of sunflowers and ironweed, which the night damp brought up from the draws and low places; perhaps, more than all, the dancing lights of the motor that had plunged by. He squared his shoulders with a comfortable sense of strength.
The wagon, as it jolted westward, climbed a pretty steady upgrade. The country, receding from the rough river valley, swelled more and more gently, as if it had been smoothed out by the wind. ”

“ In all his young life he had found no sport so good as riding on the seat beside that father while he drove the express wagon; a shiny green wagon with a seat close to the front and a tilted rest for one's feet, drawn by a grand black horse with a high-flung head, that would make nothing of eating a small boy if it ever had the chance. ”

“ With this in my heart, and amid the waving and kissing of hands, we drove off in our open wagon into the verdant mountain region.
A New Hampshire farmer, strong as a giant, drove us, his horses being brisk and gentle, and his wagon like one of our ordinary carriers' wagons, resting, unlike those, on easy springs, so that it was extremely comfortable. ”

“ On the towers archers lolled, and along the walls were pikemen, and now and then a wagon went down some old-world street and lumbered through the gateway and out to the country, and now and then a wagon drew up to the city from the mist that was rolling with evening over the fields. Sometimes folk put their heads out of lattice windows, sometimes some idle troubadour seemed to sing, and nobody hurried or troubled about anything. ”

“ That pleasure is at its highest when a solitary lantern swings underneath the wagon. In the old days the load might be coal, with the colliery-man sitting hunched on the driver’s seat, a battered silhouette. ”

“ From far and near came open one-horse wagons, piled high with weekly shaven and dressed humanity,—young and old with solemn and demure faces, with brown-ribboned queues, and garments of domestic making. Fresh, strong, tall girls of five feet ten, dressed in straw bonnets of their own handiwork, and sometimes with scarlet cardinals lightly flung over their shoulders, sprang over the wagon-thills to the ground. ”

“ The wagon, too, in which at least two generations of boys and girls have ridden in noisy hilarity whenever they encountered it on their way to school, has been so smartly painted and varnished, that if its former owner could look down from the hill-slope where he lies, he would scarcely know his once familiar vehicle as it whirls glittering along the main road to the village. ”

“ The whole place packed with laden cart, wagon, and light van. Noise, confusion, and shouting, pleasant smells and evil smells—flowers and crushed cabbage; here it was peas and mint, there it was strawberries; then a whole wagon announced through the sides of its piled-up baskets that the load was cauliflowers.
For a time I could do nothing but gape and stare around at the bustling crowd and the number of men busily carrying great baskets on the top of porters’ knots. ”

“ One evening a rainbow spanned an entire range of hills with its mighty arch, and from a black hub resting upon the hill-top in the exact centre, black rays diverged upward in perfect regularity to the rainbow's arch and created a very strongly defined and altogether the most majestic, magnificent and startling half-sunk wagon wheel you can imagine. ”

“ The wagon with its horses and its driver turned about and tumbled along the roadway on its return, and there were left alone in the forest, miles from civilization, miles from any human being save the driver fast leaving them, the man and woman and the setter dog. ”

“ On a given day of the month a wagon stops at the door and takes up, not his trunks, for he does not indulge in any such extravagance, but the stout brown linen bags in which he packs the few conveniences he carries with him. ”

“ Crossing to the south side, they went sheerly up the steep hill—so steep that it was all but impossible for the straining animals to drag up the heavy wagons, and so narrow that a false step might have dashed wagon and team half a thousand feet on to the rocks below. ”

“ From all of which you will understand and appreciate the difficulty of rescuing the trapped wagon and horse, although you will never, unless you have experienced it, understand the wetness, the cold, the exasperating stupidity of the horse, the monumental bulk and weight and the passive resistance of a wet and mud-plastered wagon, the bitter unpleasantness of the whole job. ”

“ Have you ever felt the shuddering of a wagon with brake hard on, as it poised in air the instant before it dropped a foot or two to the next level, from hard rock to hard rock? Have you ever tried to keep four horses away from under a wagon, and yet sufficiently near it not to precipitate the crash? ”

“ The old stage wagons succeeding to the pack-horses, which carried goods and occasionally passengers stowed away, were a curiosity. A long-bodied wagon, with loose canvas tilt, wheels of great breadth, so as to be independent of ruts, except the very broadest; with a series of four or five iron tires or hoops round the feloes, and the whole drawn by eight or ten horses, two abreast with a driver riding on a pony with a long whip, which gave him command of the whole team! Average pace about 1 1/2 to 2 miles an hour, including stoppages, as taken from old time tallies, for their journeys! ”

“ It opened indeed a limitless vista for new adventure.
Presently, away ahead of me in the road, I saw a man standing near a one-horse wagon. He seemed to be engaged in some activity near the roadside, but I could not tell exactly what. As I hastened nearer I discovered that he was a short, strongly built, sun-bronzed man in working-clothes—and with the shortest of short hair. I saw him take a shovel from the wagon and begin digging. ”

“ The ancient wagon, the primitive spinning wheel, and the rude weaving loom, all testify stronger than words, the slow advance from purely hand work to that of the hand made machine, taking the place of the hands. ”

“ Or to vary the metaphor slightly, it does not merely rejoice in the rotation of a wheel on the road, as if it were a fixed wheel in the air. It is not only the wheel but the wagon that is returning. That labouring caravan is always travelling towards some camping-ground that it has lost and cannot find again. ”

“ There was a stout wagon, drawn by three pairs of lean oxen at a slow and lumbering pace—probably the last wagon of a train, as it was seldom that a family ventured upon crossing the plains alone. If so, the train was out of sight along the track, which here becomes less monotonous, winding among the bluffs and along the shallow bed of a river, in which, at present, no water was visible. ”

“ We’ll have a little farm, a horse, a pig, and cow,
And you will mind the dairy, while I do guide the plow.
Wait for the wagon, &c.
Your lips are red as poppies, your hair so slick and neat,
All braided up with dahlias, and hollyhocks so sweet,
It’s every Sunday morning, when I am by your side,
We’ll jump into the wagon, and all take a ride.
Wait for the wagon, &c.
Together on life’s journey, we’ll travel till we stop,
And if we have no trouble, we’ll reach the happy top.
Then come with me, sweet Phillis, my dear, my lovely bride,
We’ll jump into the wagon, and all take a ride. ”

“ He wore an eye-glass; he seemed an unconcerned spectator of our movements—so does the untrained, unthinking eye look out upon destiny! Not far away was a wagon, in it a man. Wagon bisecting our course from a cross-road—”
He drew a line on the table-cloth with the carvingknife, and the Notary said: “Yes, yes, the concession road.”
“So, Messieurs. There were we, a battalion and a fife-and-drum band; there was the man with the eyeglass, the indifferent spectator, yet the engine of fate; there was the wagon, a mottled horse, and a man driving—catch it? ”

“ The incidents attending an actual pull are in the main more laughable than impressive. The “hurry up” wagon takes its load away, and before many moments have elapsed the same faces are seen again returning to the one attractive spot in their daily lives. ”

“ The seventh vehicle, a huge rack-sided baggage wagon, without a hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried a sonorous pile of iron boilers, cast-iron pots, braziers, and chains, among which were mingled several men who were pinioned and stretched at full length, and who seemed to be ill. ”

“ I’ll scumble in a sunset effect, lighting up the dust, and striking across the backs of team and driver, and I’ll paint a come-up-there-d’n-you look on the old teamster’s face, and the mules will be just a-humping their little selves and laying down to work like they’d expire. And the wagon! Don’t you see what fine color-material there is in the heavy load and canvas-top with sunlight and shadow in the folds? ”

“ The first day out, a heavy rain-storm came on, and I was glad enough to leave the saddle and seek shelter in the linen-covered army-wagon, where Manuel arranged quite a comfortable bed for me—seat it could not be called. And here let me say that, with bedding and blankets, spread over boxes and bundles underneath, there is more comfort to be found in one of these big wagons, where you can recline at full length, than in the most elegant travelling-carriage, where you have always to maintain the same position. ”

“ The old-fashioned, long, narrow, wagon drawn by a pair of oxen or buffaloes, so primitive that it might be a wagon which the Huns left behind in their march through the land, still crawls 207and creaks under a pile of the household furniture of a family removing from one house to another, or from town to country, or from country to town. But the means of transportation most characteristic of the place are the backs of animals and of men. ”

“ Thus the evolution of the present elaborately painted and decorated business wagon has come about. Is it not stating the truth too strongly to say that the average business man is now quite as exacting and peremptory about the style and appearance of his business wagon as he is of his much prized pleasure vehicle. He aims to have his painter achieve a distinct individuality in the painting of his (the business man's) vehicles, so that so-and-so's delivery wagons are readily distinguished from all others met with along the highways and by-ways. ”

“ On some wagons there would be four or five men and women, and here and there one would be playing a musical instrument and they would all be singing, while the creaking of the wagon came in with an orchestral quality which seemed grotesquely suitable. ”

“ They halted, as he spoke, beside a [Pg 391] long, heavy wagon, such as is used in the Eastern States for drawing wood, springless, with boards laid across for seats, and with no means of access save the clumsy wheels. Upon an elevated perch in front sat the driver, grinning over his shoulder at the scrambling crowd of passengers, most of whom were now loaded upon the wagon, while a circle of disappointed aspirants danced wildly around it, looking for a yet possible nook or cranny.
"Can't you make room for this lady? I will walk," vociferated Mr. Williams. ”

“ Frank and Harriet and I are riding into a strange land in a clattering farm wagon. Father and mother are seated before us on the spring seat. The ground is frozen and the floor of the carriage pounds and jars. We cling to the iron-lined sides of the box to soften the blows. It is growing dark. Before us (in a similar vehicle) my Uncle David is leading the way. ”

“ Lest the boys should in truth become very water-sprites, they go, toward the end of the term, for a week's tramp over the hills. A large canvas-topped wagon, drawn by oxen, carries blankets and provisions, and any boys who grow tired and foot-sore can have a lift when they feel like it. ”

“ At the rear of one of these strangely shaped carriages stand four or six men abreast immersing their heads in the water of the wagon for a fresh breath as often as necessity requires. Thus they are enabled to travel over land to any desired locality, always being careful to keep near enough the water to cover any emergency. ”

“ Truly a couple of sturdy plugs were required to drag the wagon up those heavy slopes. Providing the traveler has time and patience, and is built with a steel-riveted frame, the old-time farm wagon with three-inch tires is the surest method of making such a journey. ”

“ Wagon. A vehicle for the conveyance of goods or passengers, is mounted on four wheels, but varies considerably in the construction of its other parts, according to the species of traffic in which it is employed. They are used by armies for the transportation of subsistence, other military stores, baggage, ammunition, sick and wounded. The following wagon has been adopted for use in the service of the U. S. army: The body to be straight, 3 feet 6 inches wide, 1 foot 9 inches deep, 9 feet 6 inches long at the bottom, and 10 feet at the top, sloping equally at each end, all in the clear or inside ”