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Updated: May 14, 2025
I told mother that my place was exactly over her head, and that I was then going to climb up to it, and that when I was there I would knock on the floor, and she would know that I had got there safely; and I did. "By and by they got all the baggage packed, and they pulled the great leather covering over it, and fastened it to the back of the bellows-top.
Up under the roof of the bellows-top there was a sash folded together and fastened up by straps. I unfastened one of the straps, and saw that I could let down the sash if I wished, and thus make a glass window in front of me, so as to shut me in nicely from the wind, if it should grow cold in the night. Behind me was a curtain. The curtain was loose.
If a fresh egg were beaten into the flip the drink was called "bellows-top," and the froth rose over the top of the mug. "Stone-wall" was a most intoxicating mixture of cider and rum. "Calibogus," or "bogus," was cold rum and beer unsweetened. "Black-strap" was a mixture of rum and molasses.
You see in the coupé you step right in as you would into a carriage; but you have to go up quite a long ladder to get to the banquette. I counted the steps. There were thirteen. "When I got to the office, the men were using the ladder to put up the baggage. They put the baggage on the top of the diligence, along the whole length of it behind the bellows-top.
I pushed it back, and found I could look out on the top of the diligence where the men were at work packing the trunks and baggage. Almost all working men in France wear them. "Right before the boot was the postilion's seat. It was a little lower than my seat, and was large enough for two. The conductor's seat was at the end of my seat, under the bellows-top.
They pack it all in very closely, beginning immediately behind, and coming regularly forward, as far as it will reach. There is a frame over it, and a great leather covering. They pull the covering forward as fast as they get the trunks packed, until at last the baggage is all covered over as far forward as to the back of the bellows-top.
"I got to the diligence office before father came, because I was going to ride up in the bellows-top. I call it the bellows-top so that you may understand it better. It is a place up in the second story of the diligence, where there are seats for four persons, and a great bellows-top over their heads.
Think of all the bandboxes that in such a case would be put in at the coach-window by the driver, to be held in the hapless laps of the nine passengers! Almost I was persuaded to leave my own black satin bonnet, and perambulate the streets of New York in my travelling-calash, which looked exactly like, and was nearly of the size of, a "bellows-top shay."
"The men were using the ladders when I came, getting up the baggage; so I climbed up by the little steps that are made on the side of the diligence. I liked my seat very much. Before me was a great leather boot. The boot was fastened to an iron bar that went across in front, so that it did not come against my knees. Above me was the bellows-top, to keep off the rain.
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