`` A hot and dusty day ! '' cry the poor pilgrims as they wipe their begrimed foreheads and woo the doubtful breeze which the river bears along with it . -- `` Awful hot ! Dreadful dusty ! '' answers the sympathetic toll-gatherer . They start again to pass through the fiery furnace , while he re-enters his cool hermitage and besprinkles it with a pail of briny water from the stream beneath . He thinks within himself that the sun is not so fierce here as elsewhere , and that the gentle air doth not forget him in these sultry days . Yes , old friend , and a quiet heart will make a dog-day temperate . He hears a weary footstep , and perceives a traveller with pack and staff , who sits down upon the hospitable bench and removes the hat from his wet brow . The toll-gatherer administers a cup of cold water , and , discovering his guest to be a man of homely sense , he engages him in profitable talk , uttering the maxims of a philosophy which he has found in his own soul , but knows not how it came there . And as the wayfarer makes ready to resume his journey he tells him a sovereign remedy for blistered feet . Now comes the noontide hour -- of all the hours , nearest akin to midnight , for each has its own calmness and repose . Soon , however , the world begins to turn again upon its axis , and it seems the busiest epoch of the day , when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things . The draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner laden with wood from the Eastern forests , she sticks immovably right athwart the bridge . Meanwhile , on both sides of the chasm a throng of impatient travellers fret and fume . Here are two sailors in a gig with the top thrown back , both puffing cigars and swearing all sorts of forecastle oaths ; there , in a smart chaise , a dashingly-dressed gentleman and lady , he from a tailor 's shop-board and she from a milliner 's back room -- the aristocrats of a summer afternoon . And what are the haughtiest of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer 's day ? Here is a tin-pedler whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders like a travelling meteor or opposition sun , and on the other side a seller of spruce beer , which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles . Here conic a party of ladies on horseback , in green ridings habits , and gentlemen attendant , and there a flock of sheep for the market , pattering over the bridge with a multitude nous clatter of their little hoofs ; here a Frenchman with a hand-organ on his shoulder , and there an itinerant Swiss jeweller . On this side , heralded by a blast of clarions and bugles , appears a train of wagons conveying all the wild beasts of a caravan ; and on that a company of summer soldiers marching from village to village on a festival campaign , attended by the `` brass band . ''
Now look at the scene , and it presents an emblem of the mysterious confusion , the apparently insolvable riddle , XXXXX which individuals , or the great world itself , seem often to be involved .
On as by for in of to upon with within