Late in the afternoon I went down to the depot of the Shepaug railroad. The depot is about ninety-six feet "fall" from the village. "Fall" is the term the people in this section employ in designating distances. They don't use " altitude," because they know there is no place under heaven higher than Litchfield, unless it is a Norwalk clothing store. So when they speak of a location they do not say it is so many miles away, but that it is such a number of feet "fall" north, or south, as the case may be.

There is an unpleasant appearance of newness about the depot, but that is going to wear off. The location is well provided with the appliances of locomotion and its care.

I found Tim Keeler, of Danbury, in charge of the train. Mr. Keeler was glad to see me, but judiciously kept two cars and a part of a locomotive between us, until I assured him there was no truth in the rumor of small-pox in Danbury.

I cheerfully accepted an invitation to ride on the locomotive, but regretted it when I found on starting that we passed out of town over the brow of a hill, and saw the track suddenly dip down out of sight, leaving the perplexed passenger to wonder if the train was about to plunge into an abyss seventeen hundred feet deep, or into one only sixteen hundred feet deep.

We dashed along merrily over the hill, and when we got to the bottom we swung around a curve so sharply, as to induce me to step down from my seat.

There are nine or ten stations on the road, and if the station at Litchfield looks raw, I don't know what to say of the others. It is a wild country— a country prolific in timber, rocks, cascades, and quicksands. The road follows the Shepaug River as near as it can and preserve its balance. The river is a narrow stream that runs and falls, falls and runs, the entire distance, spluttering, mumbling, roaring, and hissing all the time. It is the most sociable stream I ever saw. The valley is for the great part narrow; the hills rise abruptly, and after reaching a great height commence to look down as if they wanted to swear at something, but were afraid it wouldn't hear them.

The valley is a series of winding turns. The road goes down, down. When it isn't going down, it is going around. A piece of straight track is a rarity once seen never to be forgotten.

The road from Litchfield to Hawleyville is thirty-five miles long, and in that stretch there are, we believe, one hundred and ninety-six curves. There are four bridges, and several pile structures on the line. The bridge that crosses the Housatonic River is four hundred and fifty feet long, and high enough to scare a hotel clerk. The "fall" from Litchfield to this bridge is eight hundred and five feet, and as the distance is about thirty miles, mathematical prodigies can ascertain accurately any distance in Litchfield—by due allowances, of course. After crossing the Housatonic, the road commences to crawl upwards, and ascends two hundred feet to reach Hawleyville.

Here the road at this writing ends; but by the time this reaches the intelligent reader a connection will have been made with the Bethel extension, and trains will run through from Litchfield to New York over the Danbury and Norwalk road.

An old gentleman, tottering with the accumulated weight of fourscore years, once told the writer that if he couldn't be an angel he would like to be a stockholder in the Danbury and Norwalk railroad.