"Now tell me another thing. Suppose the Bleeckers had chosen to become jewellers, or merchant tailors--they might be good judges of either business, and make money by it--how would that affect their position?" "Unfavorably, I confess," replied Benson. "But we Gothamites have so thorough a respect for, and appreciation of, good wine and cigars, that the importation of them is considered particularly laudable." Any further discussion was stopped by their arrival at that dreary triangular square (_more hibernico loqui_) called the Park, where Benson's wagon awaited him--not the red-wheeled one; this vehicle was of a uniform dark green, furnished with a top (a desirable appendage when the thermometer stands 85° in the shade,) and lined throughout with drab. The ponies were carefully enveloped to the very tips of their ears in white fly-nets. As the groom saw Benson approaching, he put himself and the top through a series of queer evolutions, which ended in the latter being lowered--a very necessary operation, to allow any one to get in with comfort; and after Benson and Ashburner were in, he put it up again with some ado, and then went his way, the concern only holding two. Then Benson turned the wagon round by backing and locking, and making it undergo a series of contortions as if he wanted to double it up into itself, and run over himself with his own wheels, and drove to the Fulton Ferry; for to arrive at the Centreville Course on Long Island--familiarly designated as _the_ island--you first pass through Brooklyn, that trans-Hudsonian suburb of New York, which thirty years ago was a miserable little village, and now contains upwards of ninety thousand inhabitants. "And how did the ball go off?" asked Ashburner, as they rolled up the main avenue of Brooklyn, at the slowest possible trot, according to the well known rule, always to take a fast horse easy over pavement. On board the ferry-boat there had not been much conversation, the horses being so worried by the flies as to require all Benson's attention.