Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin , sour-visaged man who as he pays his toll hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to stick upon the wall . The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a manufacturer of pickles . Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horseman clad in black , with a meditative brow , as of one who , whithersoever his steed might bear him , would still journey through a mist of brooding thought . He is a country preacher going to labor at a protracted meeting . The next object passing townward is a butcher 's cart canopied with its arch of snow-white cotton . Behind comes a `` sauceman '' driving a wagon full of new potatoes , green ears of corn , beets , carrots , turnips and summer squashes , and next two wrinkled , withered witch-looking old gossips in an antediluvian chaise drawn by a horse of former generations and going to peddle out a lot of huckleberries . See , there , a man trundling a wheelbarrow-load of lobsters . And now a milk-cart rattles briskly onward , covered with green canvas and conveying the contributions of a whole herd of cows , in large tin canisters . But let all these pay their toll and pass . Here comes a spectacle that causes the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly , as if the travellers brought sunshine with them and lavished its gladsome influence all along the road . It is a barouche of the newest style , the varnished panels of which reflect the whole moving panorama of the landscape , and show a picture , likewise , of our friend with his visage broadened , so that his meditative smile is transformed to grotesque merriment . Within sits a youth fresh as the summer morn , and beside him a young lady in white with white gloves upon her slender hands and a white veil flowing down over her face . But methinks her blushing cheek burns through the snowy veil . Another white-robed virgin sits in front . And who are these on whom , and on all that appertains to them , the dust of earth seems never to have settled ? Two lovers whom the priest has blessed this blessed morn and sent them forth , with one of the bride-maids , on the matrimonial tour . -- Take my blessing too , ye happy ones ! May the sky not frown upon you nor clouds bedew you with their chill and sullen rain ! May the hot sun kindle no fever in your hearts ! May your whole life 's pilgrimage be as blissful as this first day 's journey , and its close be gladdened with even brighter anticipations than those which hallow your bridal-night !
They pass , and ere the reflection of their joy has faded from his face another spectacle throws a melancholy shadow over the spirit XXXXX the observing man .
Behind Within beside by in of on through to upon