It sits above the bosom of the broad flood -- a spot not of earth , but in the midst of waters which rush with a murmuring sound among the massive beams beneath . Over the door is a weatherbeaten board inscribed with the rates of toll in letters so nearly effaced that the gilding of the sunshine can hardly make them legible . Beneath the window is a wooden bench on which a long succession of weary wayfarers have reposed themselves . Peeping within-doors , we perceive the whitewashed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and advertisements of various import and the immense show-bill of a wandering caravan . And there sits our good old toll-gatherer , glorified by the early sunbeams . He is a man , as his aspect may announce , of quiet soul and thoughtful , shrewd , yet simple mind , who of the wisdom which the passing world scatters along the wayside has gathered a reasonable store . Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon the sky . Frequent now are the travellers . The toll-gatherer 's practised ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle , the number of its wheels and how many horses beat the resounding timbers with their iron tramp . Here , in a substantial family chaise , setting forth betimes to take advantage of the dewy road , come a gentleman and his wife with their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between them . The bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious bandboxes and carpet-bags , and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty with yesterday 's journey . Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled with a round half dozen of pretty girls , all drawn by a single horse and driven by a single gentleman . Luckless wight doomed through a whole summer day to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the frolicsome maidens ! 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 XXXXX a whole herd of cows , in large tin canisters .
Behind Over as beneath by of on through to upon