Behold me then, gentle reader, seated with my mother on the outside of a stage-coach, with some ten fellow-passengers. The stage-coach of England is quite a different vehicle from the carriage known by that name in America. True, it is drawn by four horses, and it runs on four wheels, but here the likeness ends; instead of being built to carry twelve persons inside, it carries but six, while outside it has seats for twelve. Three or four passengers ride very comfortably behind, in what is called the basket, which is the territory of the guard, as the boot before is of the coachman. All mail coaches, and all others travelling in the night, carry a guard, or an armed man, for the purpose of protecting the coach from the attacks of footpads or highway robbers. The dullness of our journey was somewhat relieved, after a long season of silence, by the distress of an unfortunate passenger, who, falling asleep, nodded so violently, that his hat, supposing it was receiving notice to quit, very unceremoniously took leave of the skull it covered, and plunged into the mud. The outcry of the poor passenger, who was soon waked by the wind sporting amid his hair, and his unavailing requests to stop the stage, put us all into good humor with ourselves and with each other. We had another source of relief in the antics of a wild, hair-brained sailor. From spinning yarns, which looked amazingly like new inventions, he would take to dancing on the roof of the coach; at the foot of a hill he would leap off, and then spring up again with the agility of a monkey, to the no small amusement of the passengers. The more I saw of this reckless, thoughtless tar, the more enamored I became with the idea of a sea life; and thus this journey to my mother’s new abode was another link in the chain that decided my future destiny in the drama of life. How strangely and imperceptibly do small events tend to unexpected results. A match may fire a city and lay desolate the work of ages; a single leak may sink a bark and carry desolation to a hundred firesides--and trifles in the daily scenes of human life, give character to our immortality. We cannot, therefore, too carefully watch the influence of small events, especially on young minds.