1 10 4 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/f88422557e39790fd94c77739abc3740.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=oKAbwUjx0PerkFdJQ4gIA2fohugPMh5TMEw4zZ6LmW-9juuCOF0lf4p1SrGB0lfYGj0fFp7zdCZFo5hKXJCJ0pCC48aeQQrDZ6llpkaoLFR5uC9u1rn-EwAJmyX3i%7EKRZTo61dp5eaOvJxRJDY6gZw4YXo-IKAnE4mBwH2tgGabIZ41-iSSZMg4wsJ1o26dv18XPez2s3W%7E17AJwK9MeHdrXJ49vIdmoJILtguZFd2pffdLGs3RmapJ39WiYY7A1h%7E3gyPGs4SjkaBqMoLaxkcYUIK5t2OA6iWRErRtJ1x9eaByOMmLak1sT9jvWJbRO78CCY85PvaDm4nLUbuSsdg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 99810612bd8d9d535ea784f91a18bdec Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1848 Subject The topic of the resource Stories published in 1848. Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. STRAGGLING EXTRACTS, FROM A JOURNAL KEPT IN SWITZERLAND. _____ BY MISS CATHERINE M SEDGWICK _____ [p. 115] MONDAY morning, June 1st, 1840. We left Lausanne this morning, and ascending the high hill on the route to Berne by voiturier’s pace, we had time for many a loving, lingering look at Lake Leman, no longer the “clear, placid Leman” of our dreams, of poetry of Rousseau and Byron; but enriched with the best realities of life. The friendship of the wise and good has made its borders a home to us—has consecrated it, so that it is no longer strange and foreign, but a part of the “holy land” of the heart; where that Temple stands which binds what is most precious on earth to that which is most ardently hoped for in heaven. A farewell seemed sent back to us from the lovely water. Shall I ever forget these last looks of the Lake? the rocks of Meíllerie? the Pain de Sucre? the Dent du Midi? I went within the walls of the cemetery on the declivity of the hill, to visit John Kemble’s grave. A gentleman was standing beside it. In my haste (the carriage was awaiting me) I did not at first notice him. As I turned to pluck a leaf from the cedar which overhung the spot, my eye met his; and with unusual frankness (he was obviously an Englishman) he said, courteously touching his hat: “We owe this homage to our countryman, and I am glad to see it rendered.” “The name is a great one,” I replied, without thinking it necessary to vitiate my homage in his eyes, by saying that I was an American? or to [p. 116] tell him that the Kemble name had a more potent charm for me than that with which genius had prodigally endowed it.* *[author’s note]: Campbell says, in his valedictory address to John Kemble:-- His was the spell o’er hearts Which only acting lends; The youngest of the sister arts, Where all their beauty blends. When I returned to the carriage, my companions eagerly asked me if I had observed the gentleman, who, from the distance at which they had seen him, struck them as having an air of unusual elegance.—“Yes, I had observed and spoken with him.” ********, who never fails to express her thorough prejudice, then said:--“He is not an Englishman.” “Yes, he is English, and a military man.” “Ah! Then he has been over the world, and perhaps in America, and learned something of manners and humanities!” “With the latter,” I said, “I fancied Heaven had endowed him, for he has a very charming face.” Both ***** and **** wished they had gone with me; a charming human countenance would be a pleasant variety from the only face they had seen to admire for a long while—the face of the country. At a little village where we stopped to lunch, we went to the parish church to see Queen Bertha’s tomb, and her worm-eaten saddle. Her remains were found in a subterranean part of the same church, and re-interred with an inscription, setting forth this Burgundian lady as an endower of monasteries, a constructor of roads, and a protector of the poor. She was a princess comme il y en a peu at present, in more than the doing of these magnificent acts, as appears from her saddle, on which she rode astride, with her bust above an iron ring that encircles her; and she spun as she rode—“not like you romantic girls,” as I said to my companions, “warp and woof of poetry and romance, but veritable thread of flax!” FREYBURG. Glad were we again to hail the picturesque gate of this old town. We left the carriage and walked in. The bourgeoisie were sitting around the old linden tree; a still strong and fresh memorial of enthusiastic patriotism. After the celebrated battle of Morat, “Morat and Marathon, twin names shall stand,” where a few Swiss gained a brilliant victory over a large Burgundian force, a young soldier of Freyburg, one of the “unbought champions,” left the patriot victors, and with a branch of a linden-tree in his hand, he ran all the way to his native city, which he entered crying “Victory!” and sank down dead from exhaustion. The linden-branch was planted on the spot. The tree flourished; and now there are tongues in its massive trunk and luxuriant branches, which are tenderly supported on a species of scaffolding. We rose early, and went on to the terrace of the Zeringer Hoff, which hangs over the deep abyss, worn by the Sarine; from here you see the beautiful suspension-bridge, which spans the gulf some hundreds of feet above the Sarine’s bed, and the little thread of a foot-bridge higher up in the gorge. It looked so very wiry and sharp in the misty distance, so faintly traced on the sky, that a faithful follower of the Prophet might have taken it for a vision of that bridge which carries few safe over. The great tower of the cathedral, and the towers on the declivities of the hills, look as they did in the dreary days of last autumn; but now it is summer, and there is beauty and gladness every where; in the little gardens niched on the hillside; in the laburnums and roses almost dipping in the water: they are smiles of immortal youth about images of age and decay. As we re-entered the hotel, I met the stranger of the cemetery. My companions passed on; but I took the privilege of my age, and in reply to a courteous recognition, spoke to him of our mutual experience during the past day’s travel. He, too, had stopped to see Queen Bertha’s riding equipment; that being one of the regular way-side lions. He spoke of the spindle; he liked that symbol of her sex’s destiny. It might be well for princesses to enlarge their horizon; it might even be necessary; but for women in private life, he liked a literal adherence to the domestic life for which they were made. “If they were made for that alone,” I ventured to say. “Perhaps,” he said, “you would admit apostolic authority; and St. Paul, I believe, is of my opinion.” “There is a wide scope in St. Paul’s writings,” I replied, “and I thought he was of too generous a spirit to hold all women within one narrow pen of household duties.” A second summons to breakfast, broke of the speculation upon which we had rather awkwardly fallen. When I reported it to my companions, ***** said, it was just like an Englishman—if he spoke at all, to say something disagreeable—no wonder that Madame de Stäel said an Englishman had two left hands; --who but an Anglo-Saxon would have pounced upon such a topic to a party of ladies? The road from Freyburg to Berne lies through a country much like the richest and most beautiful [p. 117] parts of our own Berkshire—Berkshire without the Alps—Hamlet, the character of Hamlet omitted. The hills, even, have a loftier station than ours; and instead of our shabby fences, wherever there are divisions there are hedges. Their cottages are the prettiest of all rural architecture, with their projecting roofs and galleries. Their farming utensils, ladders, rakes, etc., hanging under their shadow; the neat piles of wood husbanded under the same shelter; and the bee-hives close under the windows--a fitting emblem of this intelligent and producing people. The rosy, stout Bernese dames, and their chubby children, both in their prettiest of all costumes, give to the landscape a living beauty. The cheerful rural life here is a contrast to Italy, where there seems to be no rural habitancy. There, for the most part, the dwellings of the working people are crowded into narrow, stifling lanes; the few straggling habitations in the open country look like jails with their iron croisées. In the canton of Berne, I am often reminded of my own country;--if not an equality of condition, there are no contrasts—no frightful distances between man and man. There is a general diffusion of comfort—no grand seigneurs—no beggars. The cultivation and products, too, remind me of home. The grasses, the beautiful turf, the apples, cherries, willows, limes (the finest I have ever seen), and the elms. The gardens resemble our gardens at this season—the same dominance of utility and small tribute to beauty—a narrow hem of peonies, seringas, moss-pinks and yellow-lilies, round ample beds of lettuce, beets, etc. We entered Berne at noon on market day, which occurs every Tuesday, and the concourse is greatest on the first Tuesday of the month; so we are fortunate in our day. The streets are crowded; the people are selling and bartering every species of movable property, from fat cattle, horses, etc., to light domestic manufactures, which the women carry about; some on wooden frames, while others have tapes, cords, and chains tucked into their apron-strings. There is a sprinkling of fresh, pretty little peasant girls, with natural flowers, curiously woven together, for sale. We jostled our way through the crowded streets; heeding every thing, but quite unheeded ourselves: not quite; for again we met the English traveller, and exchanged salutations. The peasants are better dressed than I have ever seen any rural population. Their clothes are of strong materials and enduring colors; and the white chemise-sleeves and waist, purely white, give to the whole appearance the paramount of charm and cleanliness. We are at the Faucon, excelling among the excellent Swiss inns. My English friend (friend! but acquaintance ripens apace in these foreign lands), sat next to me ; on ***** saying, that of all working women in the world, she would rather be a Bernese peasant, he said to me in a low voice, that the fly-cap would not be unbecoming to the young lady, with her light form and spiritual eye; but he thought it grotesque appendage to fat old women, or solid young matrons; they certainly are a most unaerial people. THUN. Here we are at the Bellevue—an inn in the midst of a garden tastefully laid out, and embellished with flowering shrubs. The river Aar is running away below us as if the Lake of Thun, of which it is the outlet, had been its prison. The little town of Thun is on our right, with chateau, church, and towers crowning the hill it covers; behind us is a precipitous green hill with a walk half way up to heaven, where a summer house is pitched to look out over this beautiful scenery, which seems like some exquisite picture become, by miracle, a reality. There is the lake, stretching for fifteen miles at the feet of these giant hills; and for mountains, the Stockhorn, the Neisen, and the Blumlis, whose eternal snows, cut into sharp angles, give the most startling effects of light and shadow—their existence here is blessing enough. It is strange to see summer and winter side by side—inflexible winter, with the richest blossoming of summer. Man seems to live contentedly here on the patrimony God has given him—there is no commerce, no manufactures. The parent divides his agricultural property equally among his children; and from the very comfortable aspect of their homes, there would seem to be enough for their moderate wants. The valleys are thick set with corn, and the uplands devoted to pasturage. The woodlands belong to the commune, and the division is made by proper officers. The warmest slopes are covered with vines; and wine is so cheap, that each person has a bottle at dinner without an extra charge. LAUTERBRUNNEN. As we came into the little green steamer that was to carry us over the lake this morning, I again met our English traveller; and we shook hands as if we were old friends. He did not see fit to communicate his name, but he had ascertained ours on the register of the Faucon, and he soon began talking of New-York, where he had once been, and of Dr. H------’s and Mr. H------’s families, whose hospitable doors are always open to foreigners of any pretension. Even *****, with her cherished aversion of all Englishmen, admits that he is very pleasing—or, as she words it, very un-English. He has a shade of sadness over his fine face, that only passes for a moment [p. 118] when he is in very animated conversation. It is thrown there, I feel sure, from some settled sorrow. I told him he had lost a great deal by not arriving earlier at Thun. He said, civilly, that he was aware he was a loser, inasmuch as he had lost our society; but as to Thun, he was familiar with it—he had passed the happiest days of his life there, and he did not care to go there again. “And there,” he added, as we were passing a lovely villa which had once been a convent of the Chartreux, “there I lived one beautiful summer.” Some painful recollection smote him—he turned suddenly from me, and paced up and down the deck; and then, as if determined to master his sensations, he returned to my side, and directed my eye to the cascades leaping down the precipices, and then the beetling rock over the cave of St. Beatus, which he said he had once visited. “We penetrated several hundred feet,” he said, “and found some relics of human habitancy, but no traces of the dragon whom the saint is said to have ejected from his holy habitation. I wonder if it is only by living the life of a hermit that one can master a dragon?” He spoke in a tone so deep and expressive, that I involuntarily looked at him as if he were betraying a monomania. I think he perceived the impression he had made; for, resuming his usual manner, he directed my attention to a straggling village far above St. Beatus’s cave, whose only access is a winding footpath. “A rugged, difficult ascent,” I said. “No, not very difficult,” he replied, “to youth and enterprise. I once made it with a young woman about the age, I imagine, of your young friends.” “An Englishwoman?” I spoke involuntarily, for I have seen too many English to put a premeditated question. “I beg your pardon,” he answered, “Swiss. We passed a week at the house of the pastor--an Oberlin—who so kindly led his flock in this stern and scanty pasture, that I learned from him to look with contempt upon the egotism of the old anchorite of the cave.” With the enchantment of the scenery, and the interest of my new friend, the moments flew, and I left the steamer with regret for the carriage that our courier procured us at New-Haus. There was one vacant seat in the carriage; and, knowing that my acquaintance was bound for this place, I asked him to occupy it, feeling it to be but a common way-side humanity. At first he accepted it cordially; but then some difficulty about arranging his baggage occurring (for an Englishman can do nothing extempore), he declined, and we drove off ; my young women exclaiming, “How could you?” “What on earth will he think of us--he is an Englishman?” &c., &c. To all which I replied by asserting a calm confidence in our own dignity, and my assurance of that degree of education and refinement in my acquaintance, that it could not be compromised by a two hours’ drive with him. I then excited their curiosity by items of his conversation which they had not heard, and by interpolating a few sighs, and even a tear which I was secretly sure he had repressed, I gave sufficient ground for their imagination to expatiate on. ***** was sure ‘he had a story, God bless him!”--and that was some comfort; and after a while we talked ourselves into an egotistic half-belief that he had followed us up into these high temples. **** and ***** of course reverently imputed to me the attraction; but I very well knew an elderly lady was a trifling make-weight when there were two charming young ones in the scale. However, as it fell out, we might have saved ourselves the trouble of our reciprocal concessions. As we wound up the green valley towards Lauterbrunnen, we passed the castle of Unsprunnen. It is an old ruined tower, with a flanking turret, which has a pretty tradition attached to it of feud and love, the scaling of castle-walls, and carrying off of an only daughter, and, after years of bloody strife, a reconciliation by means of the child-robber appearing within the castle-wall, and presenting his young boy to the old father. The ruin, however, derives its chief interest from it being the locale of Byron’s Manfred--a fitting genius loci in the face of the magnificent Jungfrau. The valley narrowed as we advanced along the margin of the wild Lutschine, rather a torrent than a stream. The grandeur of this valley surpasses any thing we have seen yet. The valley itself is 2450 feet above the level of the sea. The height of the walls of rock that enclose it I do not know ; but, towering above all the rest, is the Junfrau, 14,000 feet high. Valley this can scarcely be called—there is a little life-giving earth at the base of these everlasting rocks. Its name, Lauterbrunnen, signifies “nothing but fountains”--and more than a hundred streams, leaping over the rocks, or trickling down them, may be counted from our inn-window—the Staubbach, (literally dust-fall,) the most beautiful among them. Byron has so accurately described it, that, in spite of it having become a hack quotation of the guide-books, I again transcribe it: “It is not noon. The sunbow’s rays still arch The torrent with the sunny hues of heaven, And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular, And fling its lines of foaming light along, And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail, The giant steed to be bestrode by Death, As told in the Apocalypse.” [p. 119] After all, as Byron concludes in his still better prose description, it is “something wonderful and indescribable.” The weather is misty this afternoon; and Héry, a charming Swiss guide, (for whom, for our journey through the Oberland, we have exchanged our Italian Gil Blas courier,) advises deferring the passage of the Wengern Alp till to-morrow; so we have been walking up this wondrous valley. ‘Dust-fall’ is a wretched name for the Staubbach, unless there be diamond dust. The height is so immense whence it falls, that it is broken into the smallest drops before it reaches the ground. Each little fall has an individual life and charm: *****’s quick fancy saw in them the types of the most lovely classic impersonations: “Cupid and the Dolphin,” the “flying Mercury,” &c., and it was just as she was expressing, with a rather Delphic obscurity, her idea, that we were joined by our English friend. He seemed much amused with what he called the extravagance of her imagination. But the light of his reason was in vain offered to its shadowy region. She ‘saw forms he could not see, and there was the end on’t.’ As we were crossing a bright meadow to look at the Lutschine where it issues from the great glacier of the Jungfrau, our curiosity led us to ask admittance into a wretched little Swiss cottage, that we might see its interior. On the table were lying a large Bible and hymn-book. I opened their clasps and found a paper and type worthy a noble’s library. ‘Heir-looms are these,’ I thought; and said to Héry, “Such books are rare, I fancy, in your country.” “I beg your pardon,” he replied; “almost every dwelling has them.” These poor people are right: these are the records of their birth-right—the charters of their freedom—the title-deeds of their inheritance—and they should be written in fair type, and kept with reverent hands. I observed the woman who opened the door to us, give a sort of reconnoitring glance at our English friend—and then made an exclamation. She said something, to which he replied with few words and manifest emotion. *****, who begins to partake my interest in the stranger, asked Héry if he heard the words: “Partly,” he said; “the woman said, ‘You are the same gentleman who was here seven years ago, with the lady with eyes never to be forgotten?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘She is dead, then? God’s love be with her!’ ‘No.’ ‘No! And you parted? I thought death only could have parted you!’ ” He turned abruptly away, and it was a quarter of an hour before he rejoined us. I showed him a bunch of very beautiful forget-me-nots I had just gathered, glittering with rain-drops. He took out a pocket-book, and, opening a paper very elaborately folded, showed me a little knot of the same flowers, dried and faded, but the lovely blue still distinct among the pale green leaves. “They were picked here,” he said, “seven years since. Could one have dreamed these frail things would outlast a love that should have been eternal?” And then, as if he involuntarily betrayed himself, he hurried them back into his pocket-book, and did not rejoin me till after we came back to the inn—where we are now, awaiting our tea, and speculating upon the few threads we have extricated from the tangled skein of this new acquaintance. One additional word, and I have done writing journal for this day. Enter Héry with a card ; ***** seizes it and reads—“‘Lieutenant-colonel’ –yes it is, ‘ Lieutenant-colonel G----,’ printed; and then in pencil—‘begs to be permitted to take his tea with Miss S-----.’” I have sent a cordial reply, while my young ladies are discussing the card. “G-----,” says *****, “is not that the family name of the Earl of -----?” “Yes; but you know you do not regard earls.” “No; but one may respect an earl’s younger brother, who has attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel before he is thirty.” “Perhaps, the earl bought the commission for him,” I suggested. “No! no! I do not believe it: he looks as if he had earned it.” I am pleased to find, that my prepossessions are gaining confirmation. This has been an agitated, eventful evening. How far were we from anticipating the result of our detention at this inn! If we never see the passage of the Wengern Alp, we shall be consoled. The lieutenant-colonel came to our tea-table, which much resembled our own liberal evening meal at home. After we were seated round the table, our pretty buxom waiter brought in half-foot of honey-comb, from whose full cells the packed honey was oozing. This delicious preserve is a stable commodity of a Swiss table; and I have not yet seen a charge made for it—a proof of its abundance. The colonel seemed a little embarrassed at first coming among us, but was quite at his ease after taking an opportunity to say to me in a low voice, that I must have thought it very odd of him to make the communication he did to me—one hardly knew how it was—certainly, there were moments when one was hardly master of one’s self—when accumulated feeling-- [p. 120] suffering, perhaps—at a look of sympathy, burst all barriers;--he hoped I would forget it. The conversation then took a general turn. Colonel G-----, as well as ourselves, had visited Italy; and the discussion between him and *****, on various works of art, (her opinions are always her own, and not derived from any authority or reputation,) was animated. On many points they agreed; on some widely differed; but agreeing or not, every subject was converted to enjoyment by intelligence and sympathy. It is curious to see, how rapidly acquaintance ripens with people of congenial spirit who meet as travellers far from their home. All barriers are thrown down—all conventionalities forgotten; and we become almost as wise as little children in this matter. The evening was wearing away: it was nearly ten o’clock, when our landlady burst into the room, and addressing Colonel G----- said : “If you are a doctor, as they tell me, for the love of God, follow me!” “I am no doctor,” replied the colonel: “but what is the matter?” “Oh! There is a mother and her only child; and the child dying; and the mother going out of her senses!” “Is there no doctor nor medicine in your village?” “Not a dust of it. The doctor is at Interlaken, and the key turned on the medicine.” “I am no physician,” said the colonel, turning to me; “but my profession has made it my duty often to look after the sick; and I will never travel without a small medicine-chest. If you will be kind enough to ascertain if I can be of any service, I shall be most happy.” I followed our hostess, who, without any ceremony, conducted me up stairs and into the distressed mother’s room. Ceremony would, indeed, have been out of place. There, writhing on a bed, lay a little girl of five or six; she was not in convulsions: they would have mercifully relieved her consciousness. Never did I witness more mortal agony. The mother was wringing her hands, kissing the child, rubbing her and exclaiming, “My God! my god! can no help be found?” I ordered a hot bath and fomentations; and begged our hostess to bring the doctor immediately in; hoping by giving Colonel G---- this title, to give some comfort to the poor mother. “Oh! Claire, my child, you will soon be better,” she cried; and then burying her head on the pillow, she sobbed frantically, “my all!--my all!” Colonel G---- entered, and instantly became as white as marble. He stood for a moment as transfixed; then beckoning to me, he left the room: I followed him. “These are my wife and child,” he said ; “what is to be done?--what can I do?” I believe I was inspired by the exigency of the case, to give prudent counsel. “Act,” I said, “as if they were not your wife and child; the little girl must be relieved at once, if at all; her mother is evidently incapable of doing or suggesting any thing. You must use all the resources you have; you must be calm and self-possessed. “I will—God help me ! I will,” he said; and we both returned to the bedside of the child. Fortunately, the mother was so completely absorbed, her eye so riveted to the child, that she never once looked at the supposed doctor. He administered a powerful opiate. The warm bath was brought; and after getting considerable relief from that, we applied the fomentations. All this time Colonel G---- was perfectly calm; and except from his frightful paleness, and a slight tremulousness that pervaded his frame, one would not have suspected any thing unusual. He spoke in a whisper, and only to me. I think it was not more than half an hour, though it seemed much longer, when the remedies began to take effect; and in a short time the little girl’s limbs became relaxed and quiet; and a sweet tranquility was diffused over her beautiful features. “Oh dear mamma!” she said, “I am so much better! I am almost well! what a good doctor!” The mother now for the first time, lifted her eyes to the good doctor. The blood rushed to her cheek, and then utterly forsook it. She attempted to speak; but the words died on her lips, and she fainted. In the exigency, Colonel G---- did, indeed, use all his faculties admirably. The little girl screamed; he first quieted her ; telling her, her mother would be well again directly; that she had been frightened with her suffering, and she was very tired ; and if she wished to have her well, she must keep quite quiet herself. “This lady,” he said, “will stay with you, while I lay your mother on a sofa in the next room; and give her something that will make her well again very soon.” He took the mother in his arms, and carried her into the adjoining parlor. The little girl, with the ready confidence of childhood, took my hand; and turning her cheek to it, said : “He is a good doctor;” and adding twice or thrice drowsily—“poor mamma!—dear mamma!” The opiate took effect; and she fell into a sweet sleep. I soon was informed by the stir in the next room, that the lady had revived. I heard voices softened by tears ; then calmer, more assured tones; and after a while, Colonel G---- came into the room. His face was radiant. He gently, and again and again, kissed his child; thanked me with a fervor beyond all measure; saying, that [p. 121] he was the happiest man living; and that he would explain everything to me in the morning. He asked me if I would pass the night beside the little girl, as his wife was in such a condition of alternate nervous excitement and exhaustion, that he dared not leave her, or permit her to resume her part beside her child. Of course I am most happy to do him this small service. So, having bid the girls good night, and having abstained from exciting my curiosity, and abating their night’s sleep, by any allusion to the extraordinary developments in this apartment, I have put on my dressing-gown, and have set down to my journal to record circumstances that have murdered my sleep for this night. The morning came in its due course; but, alas! no sun, and “no hope of the Wengern Alp!” as I heard Héry say, in reply to the eager inquiries of the young ladies, when he tapped at their door. We have an appointment to keep—we must go down to Grindelwald to day. “To Grindelwald, by the high-road!” exclaims ****; I had rather pass the Wengern Alp blind-fold, than not pass it.” “As well blindfold Mademoiselle,” replies Héry, “as while the Mittag-horn, the Breit-horn, and Gross-horn, are themselves blindfolded with clouds.” “But what has become of the Colonel?” asked ****; and thought I, “Is he so taken up with his patients, that he has forgotten us?” I confess, I was very unwilling to go off, without knowing more of his story; but I did not choose to press on the confidence which he might have reasons for withholding ; or at any rate, chose to withhold. He had early sent a message to me, to say, that the mother was much refreshed, and would resume her place by the child. Our carriage was ordered—was at the door; and nothing from the colonel; and I was just writing him a civil farewell-note, when he rushed into the room, saying, “Is it possible you were going, without giving me an opportunity of thanking you—of speaking to you alone?” he added, turning to my companions, “though whatever I have to say to Miss S----, she can at her discretion communicate to you if you have any interest in the subject.” The girls immediately withdrew; with interest quite enough to justify the communication which I had the pleasure of making to their astonished ears on the way to Grindelwald. It seems that Colonel G----, some seven years ago,--then a very young, and a very impetuous young man, as he says,--was passing a few weeks in Zurich, when he fell distractedly in love with Miss V----. She was the only child of the widow of a rich banker; beautiful, and gifted with high qualities of mind and heart; but somewhat perverted and spoiled by the alternate doting and despotism of her mother, “a fierce old woman,” he called her; to whom I might remember his alluding, when he spoke of the dragon ejected by St. Beatus. He married Miss V----; the mother being delighted with the idea of a noble English alliance, and professing to have no concern at his having but a few poor hundreds per annum. She accompanied the new-married pair to England. There she was received by his proud family without any disguise of their estimate of the infinite distance between them. Her coarse passions were provoked. She imparted a degree of her jealousy and resentment to her daughter; and after one year, and before the birth of his child, they separated; and the mother and daughter returned to Switzerland. “We were both,” he said, “the victims of our ignorance of life. We did not understand the true proportions of things—that the less must be sacrificed to the greater. We were both irritable and passionate; totally unfit to manage the most complicated and delicate relation of life—that in which unity and individuality are so marvellously blended, that not a fibre of one can be touched, without jarring and endangering the peaceful existence of the other. We parted,” he said; “and till yesterday, I never saw my lovely child. I had determined never to claim her ;--thank God, I felt a mother’s rights too deeply, ever to have thought of separating them. My wife had the expectation of immense wealth; I was poor, and too proud to sue for reconciliation. I have been five years in India, where my wife supposed me still to be. There I have earned some honor; and now, possessing an income suited to my military rank, I came to Switzerland, in the hope of regaining the domestic happiness I so recklessly threw away. I dreaded the mother. I came here to nerve myself, in the scenes where I passed the first week of my then blissful married life. Madame V---- died ten days since; and hither my wife,--led by divine inspiration, I think—came also.—You know the rest.” Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Straggling Excerpts from a Journal Kept in Switzerland Subject The topic of the resource Travel in Switzerland, troubled marriage. Description An account of the resource The narrator, "Miss S.", describes her travels in Switzerland with two young female companions, and their encounter with a mysterious English gentleman with a troubled past. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine M. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Sartain's Union Magazine, Volume II (January-June 1848): 115-121. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [edited by Caroline M. Kirkland] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1848 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaley McDowell; D. Gussman Relation A related resource Reprinted as "The English Colonel and His Wife" by Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick in The Gem of the Season: A Souvenir for 1851, 58-80. New York: Leavitt and Company, 1851 [pub. 1850]. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document "Manfred" 1848 Alps aristocracy Battle of Morat bible Caroline M. Kirkland children class difference doctors Englishmen forget-me-nots Hamlet John Kemble Lord Byron Madame de Stael marriage married women's property medicine mother's rights Nature Queen Bertha's tomb rural life Sartain's Union Magazine St. Beatus St. Paul Swiss peasants Switzerland Thomas Campbell tourism Travel https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/875d9d83a1487eda7b40ccad9ef0c653.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=YjxhUQe4fxGtgtspK-DcK3wQxgO64d%7E10fPFC1DdIbUrEXtHpEEWz3bQNzk7ei%7E%7EVlK9OtosSikORN3jaEzYTaIdgdYVqYLcaQAGkWanIAH2qIOiOZNsFbOLIguLQvQVuDxNnaFCHt82mUWz7uQwN3Ow3DhlFSv9crkVUnxcxaNCbTTghVoohaQ4l4Jg4vFRKzByGdbjqvVweIgbTiDjQxRBy1ghltxzMAEXbk%7EHucNDc9y59j4iBQEtPHiX%7Ey6q8nO%7EKHqlBgh6gnnm16tp9aTVfkZ2Vc5UVdku7It9sTJtaKpXSKKlwM7c6AB-HWzw%7EfbESs4vDWGOvBSi-%7ERSQg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM f877a72abc102133526535102341b14e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1839 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. [p. 34] THE FALLS OF BASH-PISH: OR, THE EAGLE'S NEST. To the Editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. Two of our friends, who were on a pedestrian tour, called to see us last week. Their way of life is sedentary, and they wisely chose this mode of repairing the waste (I should more deferentially say expense) of mind and body, in their studies. As men of taste, they combined with a plan of exercise the purpose of turning aside from the highway, to see the natural beauties of our romantic county of Berkshire. But on inquiring by the wayside and at the inns, they could obtain no information but that there was a “sightly view” at such a point, or a “fine prospect” descending such a mountain. Of the manifold treasures hidden in our hills they could get no report, and this led thorn to suggest that residents in n country worth visiting should write some account of their surroundings, which should be a sort of guide-book to the explorer. It struck me this was a reasonable species of hospitality, and having just returned from a visit to some falls in our neighborhood, quite unknown to fame, I determined to send to you a copy of the notes I made at the time of the excursion. A description of the favorite haunts in our immediate neighborhood, would be a more literal compliance with the suggestion of our pedestrians, but besides, that in speaking of these domestic lions, I could scarcely divest myself of the partiality resulting from fond associations with such old and familiar friends as Monument-Mountain, the Ice-glen, the Roaring-Brook, the Precipice, &c, the journal to Bash-pish is already written, a resistless argument in its favor. ----- September 11, 1838. A bright, warm September morning. Our party is arranged, and we are on the point of starting for Bash-pish. Every thing is propitious, save that the rain we have so earnestly desired to lay the dust, has not fallen; but what signifies it? with such a party we surely may endure without complain! dust, heat, rain, or any other of the lesser evils that may chance to “light o' our shoulders.” While we have Mrs.----- and the ----- 's with us, we have moral influences that are equivalent to sunshine and showers, and all the life-invigorating and life-restoring powers of the natural world. Our party includes eighteen persons, counting by that respectable designation five school girls. As far as they are concerned, it is sure to be a party of pleasure; for, all the miseries ever heaped on a devoted party of pleasure, so called, could not counteract the joyful sense of escape from music lessons, French, Latin, arithmetic, and all those tasks at which they assuredly sow in tears, if they are hereafter to bear their sheaves rejoicing. But here is our omnibus, a long open wagon, and merry voices are ringing round it; and there is the appendix to this great work, a barouche, in which the more delicate members of the party are to take their turn, with the little unconscious traveller, who, having travelled but four months on this road of life, as yet neither looks backward nor forward. We proceeded down the county road: a soft, and as the travellers among us said, Italian atmosphere, seemed like a transparent veil between us and the mountains, and made them look blue, and hazy, and distant; while every nearer object was clear and defined. The Mountain Mirror on our right, true to its name, reflected like those polished silver plates, anciently used as mirrors, and gave back clearly the image of the sylvan beauties that stood thickly around it; while Scott's pond, on our left, looked as blue as the heaven above it. At Stockbridge a portion of our party were awaiting us, and congratulations poured in upon us on our happy prospects. The clouds that threatened yesterday have vanished—we run no risk in the open omnibus—the wind is westerly, the most trustworthy of winds, and so kissing hands to our God-speeding friends, while one of our party was muttering, as he clambered over the high wheels of the omnibus, “Jual diavolo di Carro!” we proceeded onwards, and next drew up at the inn, in the pretty village of Barrington, where the street is enfolded in the mighty arms of old elms. What beautiful memorials of the departed are the trees they planted, with their roots struck into the earth whence we have all sprung, and their stems mounting heavenward whither we all tend! Some one suggested that the Barrington inn furnished tolerable claret, and it was voted prudent to secure a few bottles for our lunch, to which, in the true vein of travellers, we were looking forward to as the next great event of the day. Our admirable purveyor, A----- , went to procure it. The man who happened to be serving the bar,—for the honor of our county I trust he was not an accredited official of the Barrington inn,—seeing A----- 's blonze, and observing his foreign accent, deemed it an apt occasion for a speculation; and having delivered the claret, said it was two dollars a bottle. “Due scudi!” (two dollars,) exclaimed our friend; “my good sir, the barkeeper asked me but half a dollar for a bottle yesterday.” The man drew in, muttered some apology, and quietly took the tendered half dollar per bottle. Such a circumstance might have been noted down by our [p. 35] travellers abroad, or foreigners here, as characterizing a district; and yet we have passed up and down this good county, for the better part of half a century, without meeting a similar instance—so reliable are the conclusions of generalizing travellers! The drive from Barrington to Sheffield is along a meadow road, and for the most part on the margin of the Housatonick. Green fields and a stream of water, great or small, will always constitute beautiful scenery; but when that stream has been the play-fellow of your childhood, and has smiled on you through all the chances of life, there seems to be a soul breathed into material things. Some of us needed all this spiritual communion, to endure with christian patience the clouds of dust that enveloped us, even through that “woodland scene, Where wanders the stream with waters of green, As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink, Had given their stain to the waved they drink; And they whose meadows it murmurs through, Have named the stream from its own fair hue.” We trust that the poet from whom we quote, when he shall have cast off the burden, we are sure he unwillingly bears, of a party-paper, will come back to the more genial task of illustrating other points of his native county, as well as he has done "Monument Mountain," and " Green River." Sheffield has far less rural beauty than most of our villages, but it has a compensation in lying in the shadow of the Jahconick, and in having their western horizon defined by the beautiful outline of that lofty mountain. At Sheffield we proved the virtue of a name; for having culled for lunch, a table was spread for us with stacks of eggs, bread and butter, cakes, pies, &c, besides a smoking quarter of lamb—in short, a fair country meridian dinner, for which, being called a lunch, we paid only eighteen cents each! At Sheffield, some slight indications that we were a party of pleasure appeared; for all such seem to share the curse that fell on Seged, when he devoted nine days to happiness. There were various signs of fatigue, restlessness, and anxiety. Some were lolling on the beds—others stretched on the floor—some bewailing the dust—and others noting mares' tails and mackerels' hicks, that promised we should at least have no dust to complain of after to-day. But what are we to do with rain in our uncovered ark? “Wait till the rain comes,” wisely says one of us, who never sees any evil in the future, and bears every present evil so lightly, that to her it seems to have neither form nor weight. From Sheffield, in spite of various guide-boards, inviting us to shorter and better routes, we adhered to that which follows the course of our favorite river, that now, though it has lost nothing of the grace of the infant, is dilating into a breadth that ranks it among rivers in our land of mammoth waters. It is, in this dry time, somewhat in the condition of the sixth age, its bed being a world too wide for its shrunk sides. Well may it linger, and turn, and double on its track, like a good spirit loving the smiles it makes; for, in some sort, it is the creator of this scene of abundance, beauty, and contentment. But oh, the dust! the dust! we can hardly see our fellow travellers through the clouds between us; and feel that farthest from them is best. We have now left the county of Berkshire, and entered the state of Connecticut; and in passing over a high hill to the village of Salisbury, we stopped on a summit, called, I believe, Prospect Hill; but where in this country of farstretching views, of valley and upland, is there a hill that might not be so designated? From this hill we first saw the two lovely lakes that lie cradled in the valley, separated only by a strip of terra firma, wide enough for a carriage road. Mrs.----- gave them the fitting name of the Twins; and the curious little hill on the right, whose natural inequalities present to the eye the image of terraces, battlements, and turrets, she called Castle-Hill. There is much use in associating names with points of a landscape; besides that, that seems hardly to have an individual existence which has no name. They serve as a sort of “open sesame” to the memory; and when afterwards we hear them, they, and their dependencies, and surroundings, pass before us almost as vividly as when the eye first rested on them. There is good sense as well as good taste, in giving a name that is obviously descriptive—it stands some chance of being generally adopted. Our people do not readily change the homely designations of “Great Pond,” and “Little Pond,” for the fine and foreign names bestowed by amateurs. The west was mottled with clouds which reflected the last rays of twilight, when we drove up to one of the two inns in the old village of Salisbury. Our arrival produced a change in the little dwelling, like setting the wheels of a factory in motion. All the energies of the landlady, who, her husband being absent, has double duty to perform, are put in motion. Here are twenty persons to be fed without any previous preparation for such an onslaught; twenty persons to be accommodated with lodging and all its accessaries, and some among them habituated to whatever there is of refinement and elegance in the country; but luckily there are half a dozen girls, in their teens, easy material for stowing, who will sleep soundly on feathers, straw, or a bare floor, and be sure of a merry waking after; and all of us have learned Touchstone's true philosophy, "When we were at home we were in a better place, but travellers must be content.” A party of pleasure must be poorly fitted for their vocation, if they cannot convert the incommodities of a narrow inn into materials for laughter. After a due investigation, it was settled that Mrs.----- , and her tail of girls, should take possession of the ball-room; that Mrs.----- , her nurse, and child, should have a little nest of rooms, some ten feet square—a strange penning up for one what last year at this time was fêted in lordly palaces, the cynosure of all eyes. To M., and F., and F., was assigned the only carpetted apartment as compensation for their French couches, psyches, mirrors, dressing-rooms, bathing-rooms, &c at home; and I sent two of my young handmaidens to secure apartments for the rest of us at the inn over the way. They returned, charmed with their success. They had engaged for the gentlemen the refinement of separate apartments, and for the four of us that remained, “such a delightful room—so Saxon.” I had some misgivings as to the quality termed Saxon; but what was my dismay, on retiring to my quarters, to find a townhall, (called by courtesy, ball-room,) built by the good citizens of Salisbury for their civil assemblings. By the feeble glimmerings of our lamp, I perceived at the upper [p. 36] extremity of the apartment, some fifty feet long, an orchestra, which the fervid imaginations of my young purveyors had, I presumed, converted into a dais. The room was illuminated by eight windows with not even a paper curtain—nothing but the dark scarlet bombazet demi-curtain, which seems the favorite ensign of our country inns. Beside the windows, there is a door opening on to a piazza, large enough to have afforded egress and ingress to all the gods of our Saxon fathers, and quite in character for their impartial hospitalities: it had no fastenings to exclude volunteer guests. And further, this " delightful Saxon" apartment had a sanded floor, which, as my young companions chose to course up and down its fifty of length, was rather unfriendly to the sweet offices of sleep. But in spite of this—in spite of the windows rattling in their casements—in spite of a rising northeaster—of the blowing open of the door, and the pelting in of the rain, a king might have envied our sound sleep on the teamsters’ beds of this “delightful Saxon” apartment! Such wonderful transmuters are exercise and fatigue, of straw-beds and coarse coverings into down and fine linen. Wednesday morning.—The winds are howling, and the rain driving, and our strolling company must be housed for the day. Picturesque travellers, we must make our own pictures. Shadows are always ready, and it will be strange, if with the bright spirits around us, we cannot put in our own lights. Half a dozen propositions are already afloat for the amusements of the day. “Shall we get Mrs.----- to read Shakespeare to us?” or “shall we prepare for waltzes and tableaux?” It is agreed that the blonzes of our Milan friends will make charming costumes for the girls, and the scarlet curtains will work up admirably into bandit gear—it will be the first real service the detestable things ever rendered. In the meantime, I have set my merry girls and our Italian cavalieri to sweeping the sand off the floor. A----- is decorating it with a series of family portraits he has discovered, evidently painted by some unlucky tinto, who had no other mode of furnishing the quid pro quo; for the landlord has sat for three portraits— once with folded hands, then reading, and then meditating; and the landlady is presented in the vanities of a most versatile wardrobe. Our Italian friends seem to produce strange perplexity in the minds of our entertainers. The woman who waited on our little party at breakfast, came to me after it was over, saying, in a most apologetic tone, “I am afraid you can't understand me any better than I can you;” and my assurance that I was her countrywoman, brightened her countenance with the first perception that we were not all outlandish folk. The floor is swept. A----- has crossed the brooms as trophies over the door—some are tossing B----- in a blanket—others gallopading, and the rest waltzing with the family portraits! We shall have no lack of amusement. At eleven, the whole party assembled at the upper inn, where a centre-table having been tastefully arranged by the young ladies, so as to give a most civilized aspect to the apartment, we gathered round it. Our amateur artists busied themselves with finishing up the sketches of the previous day. The girls cajoled the landlady out of her knitting work, and sat most demurely at it. Our Italian scholars translated English into Italian poetry; and one of our foreign friends improvised verses in his own language, till, by common consent, each individual occupation was abandoned, and every eye and ear was devoted to Mrs.----- , while she read to us the first scenes in the Merchant of Venice. I doubt if a theatrical representation of Shakespeare, with all the aid of scenic effect, and dramatic illusion, can equal such a reading of the play as Mrs.-----‘s. The acted play is necessarily cut down and garbled, and nine-tenths of what remains is travestied by bad actors; but, read by Mrs.----- , Shakespeare is truly interpreted, and every word delivered in a voice that is the most effective, as well as the most delicious organ of the soul. That voice, with her electrifying eye, and her miraculous variety of expression, breathe a living spirit into the written words, and each character appears before you in its individuality and completeness; not only the intellectual Portia, the cool, subtle and avenging Shylock, but the grave and generous Antonio, the sagacious Gratiano, &c. &c.—such characters as on the stage, are either automatons or buffoons. But Mrs.----- , who seems in the versatility of her talents as well as in her genius, to be “near of kin” to her great master, had no sooner closed her book than she sprang up stairs into the ball-room, to teach L----- a gavot, and finding in a corner of the room an old crimson banner, belonging to the citizen-soldiers of Salisbury, and a sort of helmet-cap that had probably graced their commander, she donned the one and flourished the other, impersonating an heroic chieftainess, who might have appropriated the words of Clorinda— “Son pronta ad ogni impresa; L'alte non temo, e l' umili non sdegno." Here is the summons to dinner. How has the rainy morning been charmed away! It is a pity that metaphysicians instead of scoffing at the theories of philosophers older than themselves, and striking out new systems to be scoffed at in their turn, do not observe the minds around them, and the laws that govern them. Here is our kind little landlady who has been perfectly happy all the morning in the satisfaction she was preparing for her guests. How cheerfully she has performed the multifarious labors of housewife, cook, and maid of all work, crying " anon, anon!" to every one's bidding, and casting her smiles like sunbeams beyond the clouds that were scudding before her. The odor of a turkey roasting for dinner, (a rare dainty at this season in these country parts,) acted as a charm against fatigue and disquietude of every sort. The dinner hour came—the turkey was served—the hungry guests sat down to dinner. It was a moment of honest triumph to the good woman—a, moment when the little vanities of the housewife were dignified by the benevolence of the woman. But, alas! night is next to day; and not more dismal is the change from light to darkness, than the vanishing of the poor hostess' smiles, when she saw the strongest, skilfullest hand among us laboring in vain to separate the joints of the ancient gobbler, who, though the father of generations, she had undoubtedly brought to a most untimely end. The poor woman, for the first time that day, sat down. All the toils of the day—all the runnings to and fro, were accumulated at this moment. Hope had cheated her into unconsciousness of her burdens, and at [p. 37] the touch of disappointment she sunk under them. Now our metaphysical result is, that there are certain powers of the mind, which, brought into action, abridge labor even more than spinning-jennies. After dinner we fell into an argument on the tendencies of the Catholic religion, to prolong the dominion of absolute governments. F----- earnestly contending against it in spite of his sixteen years in the dungeons of Spielberg, which we might have expected would have prejudiced him in favor of our argument. Thursday morning.—We sent through a pelting rain, a mile and a half, for a fiddler, ensconced him in the orchestra, lighted up our tin chandelier and began dancing, though we had but one cavalier who did not declare himself hors de combat. Fortunately two wandering stars suddenly rose above the dreary horizon of our young damsels. The one was a young man who introduced himself as Hermann Hinklinkcr, a German student, and his companion, a Count Catchimetchikoff, a Pole. They both spoke English well. The German student was a sort of admirable Crichton. He seemed an universal genius, and whatever he was called upon to do he did marvellously well. His eye was that of an inspired poet, and his countenance, conversation and manners, had the witching charm that belongs to the knight of bower and hall. As if by instinct he selected the lady of our fair company, who has been presented at foreign courts, and might grace an epic poem, and having called in vain on our rustic fiddler for various dances foreign, he gracefully joined a quadrille, a country dance, and Virginia reel, and danced with as much glee as if they were the dances of his own land and fondest associations. His companion, the Polish Count with the unpronounceable and almost unwritable name, was boyish and unpractised, but he had the freedom of a seemingly happy nature, and a certain air of the wellborn and well-nurtured, that was pleasing. At half past nine oar dancers had exhausted their superfluous activity, and we adjourned to the little parlor where our wondrous student sang German, Italian, French, and English with equal facility, and with an expression that waked all the soul within us; and that, perhaps, is the prosaic interpretation of what the poet means by "creating a soul under the ribs of death." The young Polish prince sang an accompaniment, that at least showed long practice, with his more accomplished friend. Our hostess sent us in a refection of cakes and peaches, and we separated at twelve, bidding our strange visitants “good night,” as if they were of us. Who were they? Whence came they? Is it possible that their advent was connected with the disappearance of two of our party, Mrs.----- and Miss -----, who left us after tea, and did not appear again till this morning? It is still raining, and has rained all night, as it did upon the drowning unbelievers of Noah's time. The wind is still east, and our pictorial party will probably go home again without either seeing Canaan falls, the lakes, or Bash-Pish. Ten o'clock.—Good, as well as evil, comes unlooked for. The wind has changed—the clouds are breaking away—the carriages are ready—Ho! for Canaan falls! Our friend, R. A----- , has joined us. This is his home, and he has undertaken hospitably to show us the beauties to which he is native, and which he rightly appreciates, and unostentatiously enjoys. The rain has done us nothing but good—it has laid our enemy, the dust, quietly at our feet—washed the trees—greened the fields—and brimmed every little brook, so that this seems the land of fresh and gushing streams. The elements had ceased their hostility, and air, earth and water, were ministering to our enjoyment, when, lo! on descending a hill, we came upon a stream that had overflowed its banks and flooded the road for a long distance. We stopped lo take counsel of an old resident, who assured us there was no danger, and those among us who were as brave as the Duke of Marlborough—that is, who feared nothing where there was nothing to fear—proceeded, in spite of the outcries of sundry of our juveniles, who were suddenly pervaded with a sense of Falstaff’s alacrity in sinking. After all it was but one of Andrew Marvel's dangers, and only served to add one to the pictures laid up in our memories; for it was a pretty sight to see the omnibus' horses dashing into the water, and to watch their passage, as they were now nearly hidden by the light foliage, that almost embowered the narrow road and now emerged from it. At Canaan falls we rejoined, by appointment, some dear friends who had come from home with us, and who, during the rainy day, had enjoyed a welcome that might have been envied by him, who boasted that his kindest welcome was at an inn. Canaan falls have long been known as furnishing valuable water privileges, and as being the location of profitable furnaces, but being far from the grand routes, they have been little visited by amateurs, and few of this dainty body probably know that there is a fall of sixty feet in the Housatonic. Human beauties have their “handsome days,” and so have the beauties of inanimate nature, if that can be called inanimate that breathes harmony, and speaks to the soul. Never, I am sure, were these falls seen in a more becoming light. The river was filled by the rains of the previous night, and literally verified what was said in another sense, by our good woman of the inn, when she told me “the falls were well worth seeing—there had been a great addition to them.” “What, more water?” “Oh no, more furnaces!” And, in truth, furnaces are not very bad “additions.” They certainly are far less offensive accessories to falls than factories, which are so upright, so freshly painted, and so full of windows. Whether it is that Ketch's marvellous pencil has redeemed a furnace from all utilitarian and anti-picturesque associations, so that you cannot see one without thinking of the young page Fridolin, and his beautiful mistress; or that there is something that harmonizes with trees, rocks, and water, in these buildings, that always look old, brown, dingy, and ominous, with their glowing fires gleaming through their port-holes. Some of our party who had seen Schaffhausen, were struck by a resemblance of these to those celebrated falls, and had the courage to pronounce them little less beautiful. I shall not attempt to describe them. Painting even is an ineffective presentment of a water-fall; and words, without the spell of genius, cannot conjure up to the imagination the motion and force of the river, as it rushes over the precipice—the rocks above, that seem in vain to have tried to repel and obstruct its passage—the pretty islands— the steep banks, with their dark cedars—the rustic bridge below—the long stretch of the river, and the far distant hills that bound the horizon, and all touched [p. 38] with a light that would have set an artist or a poet off into ecstasy. But the majority of our caravan were neither artists nor poets; so after running up and down the bank, to the bottom and the top of the fall, wondering, admiring, and exclaiming as much as could be reasonably expected, we returned to enjoy a very nice lunch, in a degree that could not have been exceeded by poets or artists. En passant, we commend, as in duty bound, the nice inn at Canaan falls to the wayfarer, where he will be sure of finding that rarity, fresh eggs fresh, and cakes and pastry most skilfully compounded. We had yet a drive of five miles in extent round Furnace lake to Salisbury, and then a tour round Salisbury lakes, so called—par excellence. The views returning, of upland and lowland, were most beautiful. We were driven to the summit of a hill whence we saw all the Salisbury world and the glory thereof. We passed a rill that our rainy day had swollen into what appeared a mountain torrent, and finally passing round the lower margin of Furnace lake, reached our inn at three o'clock. The day was still unclouded, and as the shadows were lengthening, every hour added lo the beauty of the scenery, so that the eye, not satisfied, as it is never satisfied with such seeing, our party, excepting Mrs.----- and myself, set off for the lakes. Opposite the inn there is a very green field, and this field is traversed by a little stream, that is, I believe, the outlet of the lake on Mount Rhiga; at any rate its birthplace is on that high mountain, and as it flows through this fresh bit of meadow land, it retains its free and joyous mountain character. There is always in the sound of running water a voice of invitation; and Mrs.----- and myself, having no heart to resist such a bidding, passed through an open barn, which afforded us the readiest access to the meadow, and then strolled along the margin of the brook to a clump of sycamores, from whose roots the earth had been so washed away as to afford a good seat, and their clean white stems a far better support than our perpendicular country chairs. The trees along this brook are not the willows and light shrubbery that usually affect our water courses, but groups of noble oaks, elms, maples, and sycamores, (the original growth I believe,) disposed as if they were planted by the most skilful artist—and were they not? “If this were in England,” said Mrs.-----, reverting to her English associations, “it would make the fortune of our innkeeper. There we have a large class who haunt such places. That barn would be removed, or rather it would never have been placed there, and the little aid that nature needs to give it all the attraction it is capable of, would not have been spared; but in your country the supplies that nature yields to physical wants is all you get from her. There are a few individual exceptions; but for the most part those of your people who can afford the luxury of travelling, throng the watering places; they go in herds, and must eat, drink and live, in crowds. To love and enjoy nature, requires a certain degree and kind of cultivation, which your people have not.” In spite of the amour-propre, which one instinctively extends so far as to embrace one's own people, I could not but admit that there was much justice in my friend's strictures. The denizens of our cities, who, for the most part, make up that class that can indulge in the luxury of travelling, and summer excursions, do not spend their short holiday in exploring their country and making acquaintance with its lonely solitudes—and why should they? We must be content to let people be happy in their own way. There are no daily papers at Bash-pish or Canaan falls—no prices-current—no reports from the stock market—and the most irresistible French dresses, or (as one of my fashionable friends styles them) even the most romantic French dresses, and the most perfect "loves of capes," would be worse than wasted there. But, as I urged to Mrs.----- , is there not a much larger class in our country, than the privileged aristocracy of any land can furnish, sufficiently educated to relish the beauties of nature? A love of nature, amounting to a passion, is innate with a few—but a very few. With the greater part it needs to be awakened and cultivated. In the eager pursuit of the first necessaries of existence, this love or taste has been neglected among us; but it is precisely one of those pleasures that suits the mass of our people, for it is rational, most moral, and unexpensive. Nature exhibits her pictures without money and without price. Her show-rooms are every where open without respect to persons, seasons, or hours. And are there not at this moment, scattered in our secluded places and retired villages, numbers who quietly and unostentatiously enjoy the festival nature has spread, and who are getting that 'wisdom' which “Is a pearl with most success Sought in still water, and beneath clear skies?” And are there not prisoners pent in our cities, who hunger and thirst after the green meadows and misty mountain tops? With the shadows, we again all gathered at our head quarters, and passed the evening in representing a secret meeting of the Carbonari. One of our Italian friends, who, for the project cherished in these meetings, had suffered sixteen years in the dungeons of Spielberg, showed us the mode of inaugurating a new member of the society; and different members of our party, being instructed in their official duty, regularly initiated a young black-eyed girl into the secrets of membership. We went early to bed, to prepare for the fatigues of the next day. Little did we know what preparation was necessary. Pity that one cannot take in an extra quantity of rest, as Dalgetty did of provant! Friday morning—after being joined by Miss----- and her brother, our Salisbury friend, well fitted to be our guide and companion, and indeed furnished to every good work, we began the ascent of Mount Rhiga, on our way to Bash-pish, which was to be the crowning point of our excursion. The road begins alongside the little brook aforesaid, and continues its delightful companionship for four miles to the summit. There is but just space enough between the brook and the close set trees for a road. The branches of the trees often stretch over and interweave above your head. The flowers of the season, the gentians, asters, and golden rod, were thick set and blooming among the turf, and the long ferns hung over like green plumes. “This,” said Mrs.----- , as she marked the laurels planted all along the roadside, “must be paradise in June; it is just such a drive as our noblemen obtain in their parks [p. 39] at almost unlimited expense and trouble." As we wound upward, we had glorious glimpses into the open world we were leaving behind us, of hill-side and valley; but there was one point at which we stopped and remained for some moments in breathless admiration. Here there was a wide, deep and wooded chasm between us and another eminence, that presented a semicircular front like the wall of an amphitheatre—but an amphitheatre built by an Almighty architect. The trees grew over the side of this mountain so close that they looked absolutely packed with a surface resembling a rich turf, and giving the appearance, I have remarked, of a green wall. The greater portion of our company, the hale and the merciful ones, had alighted from our vehicles to walk up the mountain. A----- , who either perceived that I was lagging, or wishing to provide a picturesque variety, struck a bargain with a butcher's boy, who was wending his way up the mountain with supplies for Rhiga, and having huddled the meal into the back part of the little wagon, he placed me, with my pilgrim's staff, on a board that served for a seat in front, where I figured as a vender of beef and tallow. The Doctor soon overtook us, another type of civilization, with his symbols, a sulkey, and a leathern sack, containing the torments of social existence for those that enjoyed few its benefits. After passing the furnaces of Mount Rhiga, (called Mount Raggy by the natives,) we came upon a lake, four miles in extent, with the Katskills for a background. Oh how beautiful that lake and those blue summits were, when we returned at twilight—mountain, lake, and skies, all glowing with the “last steps of day!” From Rhiga we drove over a very comfortable mountain road seven miles to Mount Washington, and were again in our own county of Berkshire. By the way I had a little chat with the Doctor, and was congratulating him on his ride, embracing these far stretching and sublime views, when, in reply, directing my observation to a point in the Katskills, he said, "My father was killed there felling a tree, and left me, with several other children, orphans, in a log-hut hard by. I always see the place when I pass this way, and it is a dreary ride to me.” There was much food for thought in this; but turning from the proof that the mind gives its own hue to the outward world, I remembered to have heard that this gentleman and his brother were eminent in their profession, and I thanked Heaven that the stream of life, in our land, runs to prosperity, even though its beginning be in a log-hut on the Katskills. We stopped at a farm house in the village of Mount Washington, where we deposited our youngest traveller, with her nurse, and three of our little girls, who we thought incompetent to the labor before us—and having secured three riding horses for the least strong among us, the rest proceeded, under the guidance of an old mountaineer, through woodland and ploughed land towards Bash-pish. The distance was not more than two miles and a half; no frightful achievement for the poorest walker among us—but the ground was broken and rugged, and when two miles were accomplished we had to descend a precipitous hill, where there had been a road, now only to be marked by the heaps of stones from which the earth had been swept during the late furious rains. After much fatigue we did get down without breaking our necks or dislocating our bones; but if “faciiis descensus averni,” what the ascent would be we hardly dared to think—and think of any future evil we could not, while we were lured on by the music of the water-fall, which came up from the depths like the song of a siren. ----- Here ended my journal. We were perfectly exhausted with fatigue when we arrived at our Salisbury inn, at eight in the evening—and the next morning, before starting for home, I had only time to bring up my notes to where I have ended. But what signifies it? I could not have described that most graceful of all the waterfalls I have ever seen—that treasure which Nature seems to have hidden with a mother's love, deep in the bosom of her hills. We were afterwards told that we did not, after all, see what was grandest—that we should have approached on the other side, where the access was easy, and gone to the rocky breast-work,* at the summit of the hill, whence we should have looked off a sheer precipice of three hundred feet into the ravine through which the water passes away. I believe it, for the fall as we saw it was no more sublime than a child in its wildest frolics, or a fawn gamboling through the glades of its woodland home. If any of my readers have been good-natured enough to follow me thus far, finding my story without an end, they may deem me guilty of an impertinence in publishing the journal of a home excursion, which has neither a striking point nor a startling incident. But if I should lead any to seek the healthy pleasures within their reach, which will cost them no great expense of time or money, I shall be content. In spite of the old ballad which gravely tells us that “to travel is great charges,” as you know, in every place, we spent five days, and saw and enjoyed all that I have, perhaps too tediously, detailed, for less than the amount of a week's board at a watering place. *It is from this rock, where eagles’ eggs have been found, that the place obtained the name of Eagle's Nest. Bash-pish is the corruption of a name given by some Swiss settler. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Falls of Bash-Pish, or The Eagle's Nest Subject The topic of the resource Tourism, nature, the Berkshires, Bash-Pish Description An account of the resource Sedgwick shares the notes of her excursion with a party of friends to see the falls at Bash-pish, and reflects on the benefits of traveling to experience the beauty of nature. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Southern Literary Messenger [edited by T. H. White], Jan. 1839, pp. 34-39. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1839 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Relation A related resource "The Falls of Bash-Pish: Or, the Eagle's Nest," By Miss C. M. Sedgwick, New-Yorker, 26 January 1839, pp. 290-93. "Gerusalemme Liberata" "Green River" "Monument Mountain" 1839 Antonio Barrington Bash Bish falls Bash-Pish Berkshires Canaan Falls Carbonari Catholicism Clorinda Connecticut Eleuterio Felice Foresti Fridolin of Säckingen furnaces German Housatonic inns Italian Jahconick journal Kaatskills Merchant of Venice Mount Rhiga Mount Washington picturesque Polish Portia Salisbury Saxon Schaffhausen Seged Shakespeare Sheffield Shylock Southern Literary Messenger Spielberg fortress Stockbridge Torquato Tasso Touchstone tourism travel writing William Cullen Bryant https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/2b91f565073d0b4462101db161921345.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=jWSQICLXj%7EIodGyNIG2naIOlJYpxqD9Gt7bU1%7EsV7zx2Le1Z10OQZQJzuJiPRmGGdefqxpMwFMe6ghjCos%7Es4NAnrQ8wfm4YytrLpMBJOY7mhLNhRm4hJox3XpmKWj9w5zL1qH1q%7EDYR-jOgnisAfMd3U%7EPFmh%7EoHX2g9wrxLXOtB-7CXnGzl9tKUu7rhXCNL68WrHh1xsAZGYiHAkEuNZKX3mQAHFJ-QtKZ3h0H%7E7csn5HBdS73P7-Jp2lwzRbVrF-wMmsE7PbxQNnXGNPT3r1MSgGVF8GlzQdGw72zYoqeX5ucjHTLWT1AIa2jsz22B6YBzZLRh2evL-kS7nubng__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 47eac4d2e188a6c2c969113dc31829e9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1840 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. THE BEAUTY OF SONINBERG. (A LETTER from WIESBADEN.) _____ By Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of ‘Hope Leslie,’ &c. _____ MY DEAR J ----: You have often laughed at me for my ‘knack,' as you call it, of picking up stories by the way-side. Certainly my sympathies are not more diffusive than yours, but I am a more patient listener. You have but to listen to get those little personal revelations every one is ready to make, if you but touch the electric chord aright that binds you to your humble fellow-beings. In going from Brussels to Waterloo a few weeks since, I took a seat on the box beside the coachman—a frank true-hearted looking youth—for the advantage of gaining answers to the questions that are constantly occurring to the traveller in a scene so full of novelty as is every part of the Old World to an American eye. Before he set us down again in Brussels, he had told me a history of personal hopes, projects and disappointments, that with a little skilful spinning would have furnished warp and wool for an octavo volume, with an appendix of ancestral anecdotes that he had better have effaced from the family archives. This will be a pretty good proof to you that I have not foregone my habits in crossing the ocean, but here at Wiesbaden I am cut off from their indulgence by my ignorance of the language. That does not, however, quite isolate me, for by a lavish use of half a dozen words that are common to the English and German, and by gracious tones and a decent kindness in return for the devotedness of the ‘Mädchen’ who attends us, I am so far in favor that I am sure she would confide to me her ‘petite belle histoire’ if she has any. ‘If!’ shame on that hypothetical ‘if!’ No one could hear the gentle tone of my good friend Cristine's voice, or see how easily the unbidden tear comes to her eye,* (her only eye, for in common with a large portion of her country-people she sees but with one,) without being sure that Cristine, though now in the depths of shady forty, might tell as ‘ower true tale’ of her losses. However, the period for the egotism of love is long past, and Cristine, instead of damming up her feelings to fret and wear inwardly, permits them to flow out in all kindly sympathies. I just saw her in a position to illustrate this gracious disposition. She was standing on the platform of the well before the Duke of Nassau's new palace. She had filled her tub with water, and with the aid of a friend (these people by a sort of general social compact always interchange this kind office) had placed it on her head. My attention was arrested by seeing Cristine, who is no dawdler—no loiterer—stopping to listen to this friend, and as I came near enough to see her friend's face, I thought I too would have stood with the tub of water on my head, or up to my throat in the fountain, if necessary, to listen to the earnest speech of this peasant girl who had one of the sweetest faces I ever saw—and her whole heart was in it. I think she cannot be more than nineteen, but I will ask Cristine, and perhaps she will tell me some particulars of the girl's history, for Cristine, like all sympathizers, likes to tell as well as to hear. If I were a painter, I would paint them just as I saw them, the well and all. The girl in the peasant's dress, the dark blue woollen full petticoat fluted from top to bottom as neatly as a French frill, the close boddice, and the snow-white chemise sleeves. Her hair was (as is every creature’s of woman-kind’ in Germany) long, [p. 235] thick, and neatly combed and braided. But that of this gifted girl is longer and thicker than I have often seen, and of a rich full brown, darker than the national hue. She had, in common with other peasant-girls, a black silk cap covering just the back of the head, made of ribbon and with half a dozen streamers, or rather ends, for they only hang over the back of the neck. Cristine's friend's cap had a trifle of embroidery, and was garnished with beads; indeed I remarked in her whole dress an attention to becomingness that indicated a village beauty—a dressing for the world's eye, or, I should rather think, from a certain symptomatic ‘careless desolation’ in her manner, that the eye, for which she employed the limited art of the toilette, was all the world to her. She stood with her hand on Cristine's shoulder. I hardly knew which countenance I liked the best. The peasant-girl was evidently absorbed in some precious interest of her own at stake, while Cristine's honest kindly face expressed that entire unconsciousness of self and sympathy with another, that I fancy must characterize an angel's. I stood rivetted, gazing at them till Cristine caught my eye; and as I, unluckily, reminded her of the waiting mistress and home, and her diverse forgotten household duties, she murmured over and over again “Ja—ja—ja—wohl”, (“Yes—yes—yes—sure) and hastened homeward; and her friend too left the well. This stone-well is to me the most interesting of the locales of this pretty town of Wiesbaden; an aqueduct brings to it from the Taunus Hills (a distance of a league and a half) an abundant supply of pure, soft and wholesome water. There is a stone column in the centre, surmounted by a lion grasping the arms of Nassau. The water rises within this column, and pours through ever-flowing pipes into a large reservoir. This is surrounded by a rudely carved curb, and a platform. Standing on this platform and leaning against the curb, you may see the maidens of Wiesbaden at all hours of the day, gossipping while their tubs are filling. Innocent gossip it is I am sure, from their sweet, low-toned voices and perennial good humor. Why is it, dear J--, that a well is linked with our poetic associations? Is it because it recalls home, and the thought of home unseals the fountain of poetry in the soul? Or is it because a well is a common feature in these Oriental stories that first awakened the poetic powers of our imaginations? The scene of the first love- story we probably ever read, the sacred story of Isaac and Rebecca's courtship, is, you know, at a well. Whether the well owes its immaterial beauty to all these sources I cannot say, but I never see one—whether it be like our own most rustic structures, composed of a single curb-pole and old oaken bucket, or like that which we went to see among the Carisbrook lions, or like that beautiful one of stone I saw the other day (still in perfection) among the ruins of Marksburg, or like this of Nassau–with- out seeing for the moment much more than the eye can see, and hearing more than the ear can hear. I listened for an instant, and then quickened my steps after Cristine. By the way, I wonder no one has ever thought to drill young ladies into a graceful gait, by making them walk with burdens on their heads. I do not see but the German ladies go shooling and shambling along much in the fashion of other ladies, while the peasant-girls with large market-baskets piled with vegetables, or tubs of water containing three or four pails full, walk with a true, light step, and a quiet grace that a fine lady might envy, but could scarcely equal. I overtook Cristine, before she reached our door steps. I communicated my desire to know her friend's story, and she was willing enough gratify it, but I could comprehend but one word—and that word one which every woman would understand as, Falstaff knew the heir apparent, ‘by instinct’—“Liebehaber”—“Ah! a lover in the case, Cristine. Then I understand why the spoke so eagerly and you listened so patiently. # # # I have just returned from a walk to the Weeping Oak. Its name indicates its peculiarity. It stands a little off the high road to Schwalbach, in advance of a wood of dwarf pines, and seems a fit type of the monarch of a fallen dynasty. The bark and boughs have the characteristic ruggedness and nodosity of the oak; and there is something touching in the drooping of the magnificent old limbs. It affects you like seeing an old man in sorrow and tears, and if you were ever inclined to believe the fanciful theory that gives to every tree a spirit, I am sure the old oak would persuade you to this faith. I set off alone, and passing the Koch-brunnen, where these boiling waters are forever steaming up from their great cauldron, I turned into the Acacia walk, and out of it as soon as I could; for there is something in this long formal walk between pretensionary little trees, that are so trimmed as to look like barber's poles with a bushy wig on top, that is particularly disagreeable to me. At the foot of the Geisberg is a station for asses. Here these miserable animals, whose sad destiny in this world, it seems to me, must have some unforeseen compensation, stand all day awaiting the pleasure of the Wiesbaden visiters. I wish I could sketch them for you, with their grotesque calico housings, and their attendants, men and boys, in their dark blue blouses, lounging round them. Even these ass-drivers, the lowest class of hacks, importunate by profession, here partake the national good manners, and never importune you. If a look expresses a wish for them, they spring to your service, but they do not beset you with offers. So, thinking me probably no wiser than I should be for walking when I might ride, they let me pass, unmolested, up the Geisberg ascent. The name of Wiesbaden—meadow-baths—describes its position. It is a little interval in the lap of the hills, and the Geisberg is one of the prettiest of the elevations that surround it. In our country, where, if we would have a rural walk, we must scramble over fences, and think ourselves fortunate if we can find a foot-path skirting a ploughed field, we can have no idea of the facilities an old country furnishes for this blessed recreation. Here there are no enclosures, no fences or hedges, and however devious your taste may be, you are sure of finding a path to wander whither you will. I turned from the high road and wound round a plantation attached to an agricultural school. Orchards were on the slopes below me, and bits of rich green in the valley, while on the opposite hills the many colored crops were spread out much like pattern silks in the shop window. From the town rose up the vapor that is always steaming up from the boiling springs; and as I mounted higher, my eyes caught the spires of Mayence, and the gleaming Rhine, and away went my thoughts with it to the sea, and over the sea, and I had forgotten Wiesbaden and all that belong to it, till I found myself again on the high road, and not alone there. A sturdy young man passed me with the pack on his back which denotes the pedestrian traveler. He seemed wholly occupied with his own emotions, and though after passing me he often turned, stopped and looked back, he was evidently unconscious of my presence. His eyes saw only what his heart was full of, and, as he frequently passed his hand over his eyes as if to clear his vision, I came to the natural conclusion that he was leaving his home—that seeming to me, just now, the saddest circumstance of life. The traveller was attended by a little terrier dog, who seemed to me not quite to have made up his mind whether he would attend his master or not, for every now and then he turned and retraced his steps toward Wiesbaden, with his nose to the ground and his tail down, stopping and looking first toward the traveller and then toward his home, as if he were not sure which was the right way to pursue, having a divided love, or a divided duty, which is as bad. I pitied him. Presently he sprang up on a hillock by the read-side, cocked up his ears, then wagged his tail, vehemently, barked and darted into the wood. The traveller stopped, looked after him and shook his head, as much as to say–Well! you have made up your mind at last, poor fellow!". But presently he appeared again, issuing from a foot-way which, cutting through the pine wood on our left, entered the high road between me and the traveller. The dog was followed by the peasant girl I had seen at the well. An exclamation of surprise burst from the young man. I was too far off to hear what they said, and if I had heard I could not have understood. But their action was in a universal language. I saw she had followed for a last farewell, and that farewell seemed impossible. They walked on together, her hand upon his shoulder and his arm around her waist. The poor little dog seemed frantic with joy. He had now everything he desired in life. He ran first on one side, then on the other, barking, wagging his tail, jumping first on to his master then on to his mistress, till, neither noticing him, he ran along side looking wistfully in their faces as if saying, “Now you are together, what in the world can you be sorry for?” At that moment, I doubt not, they could have envied the dog's nature and thought it a happiness to look neither before nor behind them. I followed slowly after them till they reached the oak—the weeping oak I mentioned to you. There they stopped, and as they stood leaning against the old trunk, and in the deep shadow of its drooping branches, I thought how much stronger, firmer, more resisting is the true love of two pure hearts than even this old tree that has stood here for centuries. That will perish at last; true love never. It was a broad stretch of imagination to suppose the love of these young people of this [p. 236] high nature, but never mind; I honestly give you my thoughts as they came, and if you had seen these humble lovers, you would not have wondered that they embodied my abstraction of true love. I saw this was to be the parting place. I was near enough to hear the girl's sobs, and I turned away, ashamed to be an unpermitted though an unseen spectator. I walked very slowly, and for five minutes, (it seemed to me half an hour,) I did not look again. When I did look the lover was gone, and the girl was sitting on the little embankment formed by a trench that has been dug round the oak. Her face was buried in her lap, and one arm was round the little dog, whose paws were on her knees and his head lying disconsolately against her. I came straight home, unconscious by what way, and the moment I reached my own room, I rang the bell for Cristine, and keeping K---- by me for an interpreter, I told what I had just seen. “Poor Grettel; poor Grettel!” she ejaculated as I proceeded; “God help her!” and when I finished she wiped away the shower of tears that had poured over her face, and smiling, said, “Never mind, Grettel has done right, and das ist besser!” ‘That is better,’ is a favorite phrase of Cristine's, and she always employs it when she wishes to express to me her entire satisfaction. I will not set down all the particulars of my rather circumlutory conversation with Cristine, since I can very briefly tell the few circumstances explanatory of the love-scene I witnessed. It seems that Grettel lives at Soninberg, a most picturesque old village about two miles from here, close nestled under the ruins of the old castle of that name. She is the only child of her mother, a poor blind old woman, a widow who has no support comfort or solace under Heaven but Grettel.—Grettel is the Beauty of Soninberg, but as Cristine assured me, so discreet is her conduct that the old people say it is just as well her mother should be blind, for Grettel wants no eye to watch her. And she bears her honors so meekly that the prettiest girls of Soninberg are content Grettel should be first. “But what will Grettel care for that,” said Cristine, “now Johanne is gone'.” This Johanne, it seems, is a worthy youth who has served his apprenticeship with Leising, (our host,) a master builder here. He is a steady youth and a good workman, and having completed his term of service, including the itinerary year which is a part of every German artisan's education*[*] he was just about to set up for himself, when an unexpected course of duty and worldly advantage opened upon him, and overset all his castles in the air, beside the happy humble home which he fancied he had founded upon a rock, when Grettel promised to be its mistress. Johanne, it seems has an uncle who went many years ago to America, and who is now a wealthy man in New-York.—He has written to Johanne that if he will come to America with his three young and orphan brothers, he will pay their passage, and take charge of their education and establishment there. For himself, Johanne said, he would not have given the offer a second thought—but the little boys! he stood in the place of a father to them, and he had no right to refuse. “Oh! why,” he asked, “should their uncle, who had forgotten them so many years, just now remember them?”—The ‘why’ is easily told. He had lost his only son, and was too far advanced in life to hope to repair the loss. The next thing to be done, after Johanne had made up his own mind, Cristine said, was to pursuade Grettel to go with him. “Johanne knew this would not be right, but men wereso used to having every thing their own way, that to pleasure themselves they were ready to pull down the walls God had set up.” “Surely, surely,” Grettel said, “God would never forgive her if she forsook her old blind mother; and if in His mercy He should forgive her, she would never forgive herself!” Johanne urged that her mother was very old—that she could live but a little while-and he must live a life-time without Grettel; that the neighbors could be kind to the old woman; that she would have a florin a month from the poor's box, beside many a casual gift when she was known to be quite alone; that his first earnings should be sent to her succor. He even went so far as to get the consent of a kind-hearted dame that the old woman should be removed to her house. Some of the neighbors, too, feeling it to be a very hard case for the lovers, joined their entreaties to Johanne's, and promised Grettel they would do all in their power for her mother. But as Cristine again and again assured me, the good child never ſaltered, and “das ist besser,” said the honest creature. “Never, never will I bring tears from her blind eyes,” said Grettel. “God gave me to her, and till he separates us, I will not leave her.” No arguments, no entreaties made her waver. The generous girl would not even permit her mother to know the sacrifice she was making, and when the old woman remarked that Grettel's step was heavy and her voice sickly, and begged her to take some odious nostrum, Grettel swallowed it and said nothing. “And then, when Johanne saw how good she was, he loved her better than ever, and before he went away, he said she had done right, and he did not deserve her. And for my part,” concluded Cristine, “if any man on earth gets Grettel, I think it will be more than he deserves.” By the way, our friend Cristine has contracted rather an humble opinion of the deserts of mankind; and, as often happens with ancient maidens, her charities for them contract as her sympathies with her own sex expand. It is, as Cristine says, “a hard case.” Grettel has but obeyed the strong law of nature in setting her affections on one who, according to that law, should supersede father, mother and home, and when I think on the ease, social dignity and competence that reward the children of toil in our happy land, and see what a life of privation and hardship she must endure in this mouldering village of Soninberg, the sacrifice appears to me much greater than she knows it to be. However, she is, after all, rather to be envied than pitied. Strait and narrow is the way of self-denial, and she has entered therein—and obscure and unknown as she is, she will be one of ‘the few’ who, having resolutely chosen her duty for her law, will be rewarded with more than all the glory of this world; or even than all its love, which is a good deal more seducing. ---------- Our detention at Wiesbaden, dear J–, gives us an opportunity of seeing the strange chances of human life exemplified in the story of our poor friend of Soninberg. It is ten days since the parting at the Old Oak. When Cristine came into our room this morning, she looked haggard and sorrowful, and instead of her usual cheerful “Gutten Morgen,” she muttered something about “God's time and our time never coming together;" and before this first of Cristine's murmurings at Providence was interpreted to me, the cause of it was fully explained by her telling us that Grettel's mother was dead. “If her poor dark life had ended but ten days ago,” Cristine said, “all would have been well enough, but now Johanne was on the sea, and who could reach him there? But it is I only, ladies, that am wicked enough to think of all this: Grettel grieving only that her mother has gone from her and thinks but of that. Grettel let the old woman believe that Johanne had gone to Frankfort to work at his trade, and was a comfort to her to think that he was just waiting to earn money enough to come back and marry Grettel. Oh! It made my heart beat as though it would come out of me when the old woman, in her last strength, rose up from her pillow and said, “Grettel, give my love and my blessing to Johanne; he is a good boy, and you will be a happy wife, and God send you as good a child for your old age as you have been to me—light to my heart when all other light was gone—God be thanked I have had you to the last—to the last.’—She sank back and did not speak again, and poor Grettel fell on her knees and said, “God be praised that I am here!’ And so I try to say to,” added Cristine in conclusion, “but indeed had it pleased God so, it would seem to work better round that the old body should have died ten days ago. But it's too late now, and so it does not signify; and poor Grettel must go on as I have done, working for others and caring for others—it's a lonesome life, ladies.” Christine sighed deeply. It was a moment when the harness of life was galling, and though I felt how truly the poet’s words applied to her, “With cheerful heart, and purpose pure, So—our onward way is sure,’ I shall take a happier moment to enforce their consoling moral. [p. 237] I have elsewhere, my dear J----, described to you the various rural “Gast-hauser,' (guest-houses,) eating-gardens, and multiplied walks, provided about this place for the recreation of the Wiesbaden visitors. If you would lose yourself in a romantic solitude, you have but to go up the lovely valley of the New-Thal, to the forest of the New-Berg, where, in the green arched walks you will meet no one, not even such as should be found ‘In their assigned and native dwelling-place.’ Or you may mount to the old Roman water-tower, and see all these hills with their wavy outlines sloping down to Wiesbaden, and hung with vines and grain of every color, and in the distance the Rhine (its very name giving charm to the scene) for many a mile. Or if you have a town taste, and like the ‘sweet security of streets,’ you may promenade up and down the long walks in William street, where from the broad shadows of the double row of sycamores you may look out on the sunny pavement, the hotels, museum, &c., opposite to you, and the traveling post-equipages that are entering and leaving Wiesbaden, and to which it must take a long time to accustom an American eye, so that the horses without blinders, looking round as if they were on the point of speaking to you, the frightful distance between the wheel-horses and leaders, and the mystery of the safe guiding of the immense machine that comes lumbering on after him by the one postillion, shall cease to be a matter of curiosity. Or if you like to hide yourself while you hear the din of the world all around you, you can go to the dark walks behind the colonnade. Or if you prefer ‘happy human faces,’ where there seems nothing but the spirit God has given them to make them happy, stray up the Acacia walk. There on the wooden seats you will see groups of the Bourgeois—men, women and children—looking as if they had not an anxiety or care on earth. But probably you, like myself and most of the world here, would prefer, day after day, and evening after evening, to all other resorts, the garden of the Cur-Saal. This garden, or rather pleasure-ground, occupies the whole interval between the hills from the centre of Wiesbaden to the village of Soninberg. The valley gradually narrows for two miles, and finally closes at the rocks on which the old castle of Soninberg was erected. The garden is a part of the Duke's private domain, and is kept in ducal order. You enter on each side of the Cur-saal, a public building about 300 feet long, where there are splendid apartments devoted to gambling all day and all night, excepting two or three times a week, when the roulette tables give place to music and dancing. Passing through a wood of catalpas, (unless you prefer going through the Cur-saal, and seeing the gentlemen and ladies standing round the table, losing and winning gold with apparent unconcern) you find a plot of ground behind the Cur-saal, occupied by tables and chairs, and coteries of Germans and English, regaling on Rhenish wines, coffee, cake and ices. I turned my back on all this, as usual, last evening, and took the way to Soninberg, skirting along the piece of artificial water—a clear large mirror to reflect the fine-dressed gentlemen and ladies and the far better dressed flowers that are flourishing round its brim. These gentlemen and ladies, by the by, seem to me to be travestied by a stately pair of white swans and a family of ducks that live on this water; the swans pompously sailing back and forth without an object in life, apparently, but to show off their beautiful forms and dress; and the ducks whirling and turning, and gabbling, and feeding—always feeding. But I am ashamed of an ill-natured thought here, where every living thing contributes to the cheerfulness of the scene. Flowers, and choice ones too, are in profusion; for besides the rich fringe of geraniums, roses, pinks, myrtles and other precious plants around the edge of the water, you are constantly passing plots of heart's ease, astres, hydrangeas, strips of roses, and plantations of splendid dahlias. The walks are as intricate and multiplied as the space admits. As the valley narrows they diminish in number, and finally end in one which follows the windings of a little brook, too wide for you or me to leap, dear J----, but which H----, or any other active boy would think it no feat to jump over. It is this little brook, murmuring with a voice as soft and low as a German woman's, that gives the peculiar charm to this walk to Soninberg. The scenery is tame enough; indeed you see nothing but the garden, and the hills that slope to it. But the water is natural; it has a familiar home look and sound; and the tree (willows, locusts and poplars) and the clematis that hangs over them, and the clusters of bright red berries, all seem to have grown there at their own will and pleasure. For more than two miles, you follow the windings of the stream, and then as you approach the ruins of Soninberg, the valley has come to an end, and you mount the side of the hill. Soninberg was one of the fortified castles of the Middle Ages. It must have occupied an important position, commanding the only pass from the upper to the lower valley.—The remains are still extensive. Arches and fragments of wall are standing at many hundred yards' distance from the Keep, and other masses of masonry in good preservation on the height. You can hardly imagine anything more picturesque in its way than this old village of Soninberg, with its little angular rookeries of rough beams and plaster all huddled together under the protecting shadow of the castle, like a brood of frightened chickens under the wing of their mother. Some of these little dwellings are niched in an angle of the old wall; others in part built of its fragments. Here a street runs under a narrow stone arch of the old fortification; there it passes the simplest of all rustic bridges over the very little stream that gladdens the garden, and here it ends against the mouldering chapel of the castle. These abodes of extremest poverty have at this moment a beauty and luxury that our gentlemen with their hot house graperies might envy. Between the lower and upper windows there is a grape vine in a regular festoon, and pendent from it just now (for it is a most fortunate season for the vine growers) bunches of grapes so full and beautiful that they could never seem ‘sour grapes,’ even to those who could not get them! A rich drapery,’ is it not, for these poor cottages? and some counterbalance for the luxuries of space and pure air which the poorest of our country poor enjoy. But I have forgotten in the village, that I am drawing near to the ruins, and am admonished by the rose color on the evening clouds that there is no time to loiter. I passed through the great arched way where I suppose the port-cullis was, and ascending a steep acclivity by the side of a wall overgrown with wild plants, I went round the tower and through the labyrinthine walk, which has been formed by the Duke's order I suppose, of hawthorn and clematis, and which is a very simple and excusable bit of pretty petitesse amid these grand old ruins. I smiled at seeing here and there a table arranged with a circular seat. I do not believe the Germans could be tempted to go where there was not a table on which to set a bottle of their precious Rhenish, and half a dozen social glasses. After rambling around till I was tired, I seated myself at a projecting point, a good look-off; but instead of looking off I looked up, and directly above, seated on the ground and leaning her head against a broken wall, I saw my pretty peasant girl, Grettel. She had come here to think her own thoughts, I suppose, drawn by the mysterious sympathies of Nature that even the most uncultivated feel at some moments of their lives. And here, soothed by their maternal influence, she had fallen asleep. Her knitting-work, the ‘idlesse’ of every German woman, had dropped from her hand and lay on her lap. The delicate white flowers of a clematis that fringed the broken wall, shaded her cheek, and to complete the picture (for with the rose-colored clouds above mentioned it was a picture that might have tempted Cole's Heaven-loving pencil) the little terrier-dog was sleeping at her feet. Suddenly he awoke, raised his head, and cocked up his ears. His manner quickened my senses, and I fancied I heard a quick footstep behind a wall which intervened between me and the path. Grettel was still sleeping. A smile played on her lips. I thought she had forgotten her sorrows and was dreaming of Johanne, and I would have muzzled the little dog if I could, when he sprang up, barked and bounded off. Grettel awoke, and to a reality better than any bliss of dreams, for at the next instant I saw her in Johanne's arms. We leave Wilsbaden to-morrow, but not till the last act in this drama of my peasant girl is played out. I have just seen Cristine in her gala dress, and with a truly fête-day face, prepared to go to Grettel's wedding, and to-morrow the happy pair set off for their home in the New World. It seems that the good school-master of Soninberg, who, if he did not think with Helóise that letters were invented for the love-stricken maiden, was eager to make them subserve her use—at the moment of the death of Grettel's mother, wrote to Johanne at Hamburg. It had so happened that Johanne, ‘by the good will of Providence,’ as Cristine says, had failed in getting there at the time he intended, and was awaiting the sailing of an American ship. The letter reached him, and in Cristine's favorite phrase, ‘das ist besser;’ that is to say, all has ended as well as if Cristine's kind and loving heart had arranged the catastrophe. __________ [Sedgwick’s notes] * One is painfully struck on first going to the Continent with the prevalence of diseases of the eye among the lower classes. In an infant Charity School I visited at Wiesbaden, I think out of a hundred at least ten had diseased eyes. The women live out of doors, their babies in their laps or on the ground beside them. Bonnets are not worn by females of the lower orders of any age; there is therefore no protection for the eyes. * [*] There is a law throughout Germany, requiring the artisan, when he has finished his apprenticeship to travel a year from city to city (visiting, if he pleases, Paris and London,) in order to improve himself in his art. When he arrives in a German town, he goes to the herberg, a tavern kept for artisans, and there, after reporting himself to the police, finds employment. This is an admirable provision tending to facilitate the diffusion of the arts, and the enlargement of the artist's knowledge out of his art. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Beauty of Soninberg. A Letter from Wiesbaden. Subject The topic of the resource Germany, travel, love and devotion. Description An account of the resource The narrator writes a letter describing her travels in Germany, and recounts a love story about a beautiful young woman in the town of Soninberg. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick, Author of 'Hope Leslie' &c.] Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The Evergreen (May 1840), pp. 234-37. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available New York: J. Winchester Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1840 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource D. Gussman Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Document Language A language of the resource English "God Soul and World" 1840 aqueduct artisans As You Like It beauty blindness Carisbrook lions Dogs donkeys Duke of Nassau eye-disease Falstaff filial piety Frankfurt Geisberg Germany Goethe Héloïse Isaac Kursaal Gardens letters Marksburg Mothers New York old maid Old World peasants Rebecca Rhine Schwalbach servant Shakespeare Soninberg Taunus Hills The Evergreen Thomas Cole tourism Travel wells Wiesbaden https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/a3125485e138a05437e04da57d4a636b.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=hIk61CcgYGJzfIpHptl1hKGNhxmSzUGYR%7E-bRxzsP5-oYJ%7ETcX90cmisolomLOVjS91xa-%7EAuR0lOQaAyxWh%7EvpoCYuqgb1SY-c-k-5HcOucbVou7x1wU4VnPvGYSd4zBnuNuPpBposIWkg7FLB7IoxSLQ31rbdB8xmULSzv3XEdTK2JR8GjlRtX7F1fWNCVHQ2N%7EEvVEMSHAWL64UOrsiAs1SVusfA3kNCrjhefov4mM0IhI8WFThDJFgP-7FnnlSx04MshAxhWCGcCZiYZGTHoIRzGRzodYFeI9rtG23DrcnfyMhSA0UqHhDdyPws8MBGdIiUQC26qpUnnPIglIA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b994c2435d4abe172fcb67bb2b97d2e8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 1856 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. THE WHITE HILLS IN OCTOBER [p. 44] OUR town friends who fly from the heat, and dust, and menacing diseases, and insupportable ennui of their city residence, during the moths of July and August, may have an escape, but they have little enjoyment. We admire the heroism with which they endure, year after year, the discomforts of a country hotel, or the packing in the narrow, half-furnished bedrooms and rather warm attics of rural lodging-houses, and the general abatement and contraction of creature-comforts, in such startling contrast to the abounding luxuries of their own city palaces. But they are right; the country, at any discount, is better, in the fearful heats of July and August, than the town with its hot, unquiet nights and polluted air. Any hillside or valley in the country, and a shelter under any roof in or upon them, with the broad cope of heaven above, (not cut into patches and fragments by intervening walls and chimney-tops,) and broad fields, and grass, and corn, and woodlands, and their flowers, and freshening dews and breezes, and all Nature’s infinite variety, is better than every appliance and contrivance for battling with the din, the suffocation, and unrest of city life. Yes, our city friends are right in their summer flights from “The street, Filled with its ever-shifting train.” But they must not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life, their mere snatch at its mid-summer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit, is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare’s heroines, only in her court-dress at her uncle, the duke’s ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then en pleine toilette. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months. Blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters—changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds—sweet, budding, blossoming May—flowery June—fruitful September—golden, glorious October—dreary, thoughtful November; and all of winter, with its potent majesty and heroic adversity. But let our citizens come to our rural districts—the more, the better for them! Only let them not imagine they get that enough which is “as good as a feast.” This preamble was naturally suggested by our autumnal life in the country, and by a recurrence to a late delightful passage through the White Hills of New-Hampshire. “That resort of people that do pass In travel to and fro,” during the intense months of July and August, we found in October so free from visitors, that we might have fancied ourselves the discoverers of that upland region of beauty, unparalleled, so far as we know, in all the traveled parts of our country. And for the benefit of those who shall come after us, for all who have their highest enjoyment, perhaps their best instruction, in Nature’s Free School, we intended to give some brief notices of our tour, in the hope of extending the traveling season into October by imparting some faint idea of the startling beauty of this brilliant month in the mountains; but what we might have said was happily superseded. At a little inn, in a small town, after we came down from the “high place,” we met a party of friends who had preceded us along the whole route by a day. A rain came on, and we were detained together for twenty-four hours. We agreed to pass the evening in a reciprocal reading of the brief notes of our journey. It came last to the turn of my friend, a very charming young person, whom I shall take the liberty to call Mary Langdon. She blushed and stammered, and protested against being a party to the contribution. “My only record of the journey,” she said, “is a long letter to my cousin, which I began before we left home.” “So much the better,” we rejoined. “But,” she said, “ it has been written capriciously, in every mood of feeling.” “Therefore,” we urged, “the more variety.” At last, driven to the wall, she threw a nice morocco letter-case into my lap, saying: “Take it and read it to yourself, and you will see why I positively can not read it aloud.” So we gave up our entreaties. I read the letter-journal after I went to my room. The reading cheated me of an hour’s sleep—perhaps because I had just intensely enjoyed the country my friend described; and in the morning I begged Miss Langdon’s permission to publish it. She at first vehemently objected, saying it would be in the highest degree indelicate to publish so much of her own story as was inextricably interwoven with the journey. “But, dear child,” I urged, “who that reads our magazines knows you? You will be on the other side of the Atlantic in another month, and before you return this record will be forgotten, for alas! we contributors to monthlies do not write for immortality!” “But for the briefest mortality I am not fitted [p. 45] to write,” she pleaded. I rather smiled at the novelty of one hesitating to write for the public because not fitted for the task, and (thinking of “the fools that rushed in”—there is small aptness in the remainder of the familiar quotation) I continued to urge, till my young friend yielded, on my promising to omit passages which related to the private history of her heart—Mary Langdon not partaking that incomprehensible frankness or child-like hallucination which enables some of our very best writers, Mrs. Browning, for instance, to impart, by sonnets and in various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring public those secrets from the heart’s holy of holies that common mortals would hardly confess to a lover—or a priest. It is to our purpose, writing, as we profess to do pour l’utile, that our young friend indulged little in sentiment, and that, being a country-bred New-England girl, she conscientiously set down the coarser realities essential to the well-being of a traveler—breakfasts, dinners, etc. But before proceeding to her journal, I must introduce my débutante, if she who will probably make but a single appearance before the public may be so styled. Mary Langdon is still on the threshold of life—at least those who have reached threescore would deem her so, as she is not more than three-and-twenty. The freshness of her youth has been preserved by a simple and rather retired country-life. A total abstinence from French novels and other like reading has left the purity and candor of her youth unscathed by their blight and weather-stain. Would that this tree of the knowledge of evil—not good and evil--were never transplanted into our New World! Beware, ye that eat of it; your love of what is natural and simple will surely die. Mary Langdon’s simplicity is that of truth, not of ignorance. Her father has given her what he calls “a good education”—that means, he says, that “she thoroughly knows how to read, write, and cipher, which,” he rather tartly adds, “few girls brought up at French boarding-schools do.” As might be suspected from the practical ideas in her narrative, our young friend has had that complete development of her faculties which arises out of the necessities of country-life in its best aspects. Mary Langdon is called only pretty, but her prettiness is beauty in the eyes of her friends and lovers; and then she is so buoyant, so free of step and frank of speech, that while others are slowly winding their way to your affection, she springs into your heart. With due respect to seniority, we should have presented Mr. Langdon before his daughter. On being called on for his journal, he said he “ was not such a confounded fool as to keep one for any portion of his life.” He “should as soon think of crystallizing soap-bubbles. He had dotted down a few memoranda as warnings to future travelers, and we were welcome to them; though he thought we were too mountain mad to profit by them, if indeed any body ever profited by any body’s else experience!” The fact was, the dear old gentleman had left home in a very unquiet state of mind. He hated at all times leaving his home, abounding in comforts—he detested travel even under what he termed “alleviating circumstances.” He was rather addicted to growling. This English instinct came over with his progenitor in the May Flower, and half a dozen generations had not sufficed to subdue it. But Mr. Langdon’s “bark is worse than his bite.” In truth his ‘bite’ is like that of a teething child’s, resulting from a derangement of sweet and loving elements. We found our old friend’s memoranda so strongly resembling the grumbling of our traveling cousins from over the water, that we concluded to print it so portions of it, in order to illustrating the effects of the lights or shadows that emanate from our own minds. Providence provides the banquet; its relish or disrelish depends on the appetite of the guest. But to Mary Langdon’s letter, which, as it was begun before she left home, bears its first date there: “LAKE-SIDE, 28th Sept., 1854. “MY DEAR SUE,--I have not much more to tell you than my last contained. Carl Hermann left our neighborhood last week, determined to return by the next steamer to Dusseldorf. We were both very wretched at this final parting. But as I have often seen people making great sacrifices to others, and then losing themselves, and letting others lose all the benefit of the sacrifice, by the ungracious manner of it, I summoned up courage, and appeared before my father calm and acquiescing, and (you will think me passionless, perhaps hard-hearted) I soon became so. I read over and over again your arguments, and I confess I was willing to be persuaded by them. But, after all, my point of sight is not yours, and you can not see objects in the proportions and relations that I do. You say I have exaggerated notions of filial duty—that I have come to mature age and ripe judgment, and that I should decide and act for myself—that in the nature of things the conjugal must supersede the filial relation, and that I have no right to sacrifice my life-long happiness to the remnant of my father’s days; and above all, I am foolish to give in to his prejudices, and—selfishness,’ you added, dear, and did not quite efface the word. Though I see there is much reason in what you say, I have only to reply that I can not marry with my father’s disapprobation. I can not and I will not. Our hearts have grown together. God forms the bond that ties the child to the parent, and we make the other; and it shows human work—being often fragile, sometimes rotten. Susy, you lost your parents when you were so young, that you can not tell what I feel for my surviving one. Since my mother’s death and the marriage of Alice, he has lived in such dependence on me, that I can’t tell what his life would be if I were to leave him: and I will not. You tell me this is unnatural, and a satisfactory proof to you that I do not love Carl. Oh, Sue!— ” [pg. 46] Here must be our first hiatus. We can only say that the outpouring of our young friend’s heart satisfied us that beneath her serene surface there was an unfathomable well of feeling, and that her friend must have been convinced that “Love’s reason is not always without reason.” The letter proceeds: “I very well know that my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men’s prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be cured of them. My father’s do not spring from any drop of bitterness, for he has not one; nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and he he naturally partakes the opinions of his contemporaries, who, the few surviving among them, deem all foreigners interlopers, outside barbarians, strangers intermeddling with that liberty, equality, and pursuit of happiness which is their exclusive birth-right; or rather, I suspect, that in their secret souls they regard the theories of their revolutionary fathers as a Utopian dream. A foreign artist above all is, in my father’s eye, a mere vagrant, who neither deserves nor can attain a local habitation or a name; and thus my poor Carl, with divine gifts, and habits of industry that would make the fortune of a mere mechanic, is thrust aside.” Here Mary Langdon begins the narration of her journey, and here we give notes, a few specimens from her father’s memoranda, that our readers may have the advantage of seeing the same objects from different points of sight, premising that our old friend’s memoranda were scanty, and repeating that we give but specimens. We smile at his petulance more in love than ridicule. We are not fond of showing it off, and only do so in these brief extracts to substantiate our opinion that his traveling temper showed him near of kin to English tourists, who seem to make it a point to turn their plates bottom side upward. The father and daughter both record the same facts. The one shows the rights and beautiful side of the tapestry, the other the wrong one. Strange that any eye should make the fatal mistake of dwelling on the last rather than the first! “On Monday, 2d of October,” proceeds Mary Langdon in her letter to her cousin, “we came into Boston, to take the two o’clock train for Portland. We had three hours upon our hands, which we pleasantly filled up by visits to a studio and picture-shop; and finally, our mortal part, having given out while we were feasting the immortal, we repaired to a restaurateur’s. We groped our way into a little back room in School Street, where, if we did not find luxury or elegance, we did what met our reasonable wants-- wholesome fare and civility.*….. ___________________________________ * EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL 2nd October, Anno Domino, 1854. Left my comfortable lowland home for unknown parts, and known regions of snow and ice. The Lord willing, I am sure of one pleasure—coming home again! “We had three mortal house on our hands this morning in Boston. I called on my dear old friends, the survivors of the _____ family. Not one of them, they told me, has yet risked life in a rail-car. Wisdom is not extinct! “Called on respected Widow A-----. Could not see much of Sally -----, my old sweetheart, about her; but we got upon old times, and the color came to her pale, furrowed cheek. Women never forget—loving souls! She gave me a nice lunch—pickled oysters, etc. and a glass of old Madeira. Meanwhile the girls were ranging round studios (?), good lack! and picture-shops. This rage for ‘Art” has come in with the foreign tongues since my time. Picked them up at a restaurant. What a misnomer! A dainty place of refreshment to be sure; a little parlor behind a shop, with herds rushing in and herds rushing out! ________________________________________ “The passage to Portland was dusty but brief, and we arrived there in time to see its beautiful harbor, while the water reflected the rose-tints on the twilight clouds. We, as advised, eschewed the hotel, and were kindly received at a Miss Jones’s, a single woman, who so blends dignity with graciousness, that she made us feel like invited guests. One might well mistake the reception of the hostess for the welcome of a friend. Her table has an American variety and abundance with the nicety of English appointments. Her house is a model. Its quiet and completeness reminds one of that classic type of comfort, an English inn. The house, with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be apocryphal, but which would harmonize with the bonhomie of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady closed her patriarchal length of days serenely; and when she was dying, she requested that the order of her household should be in no wise disturbed by the event of her decease, but that ‘the gentlemen should play their evening game of whist as usual!’*….. ____________________________________ *EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL “Came by rail to Portland, in peril of life and limb. Stirred up with fifty plebieans treading on your toes and jostling your elbows. This modern improvement of cattle-pens over a gentleman’s carriage with select and elect friends, and time to enjoy a beautiful country, is the ‘advance of civilization!’ Travelers now are prisoners under sentence of death- their keeper being called a conductor. Oh! I cry with my old friend Touchstone, ‘when I was at home, I was in a better place!’ Heaven grant me his philosophy to add, “Travelers must be content.’ “Portland. Rather a nice house is this Miss Jones’s. Old-fashioned neatness and quiet. But what would our English traveler say to the lady bestowing her own company, unasked, and that of her guest, upon us! Bad butter spoiled my tea and breakfast. The girls did not notice it. Young folks have no senses.” _________________________________________ “Tuesday. Miss Jones’s morning face was as benign as her evening countenance. No lady could have administered hospitality with more refinement. Just as the door of the carriage that was to convey us to the station was closing, it was reopened, and a rough-hewn, but decent country body was shoved in by the driver, who muttered something about there being no other conveyance for her. My father looked a little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating -- no native American would do that -- but he was just lighting his after-breakfast cigar, and he shrunk from the impropriety of smoking in such close quarters with a stranger who bore a sem- [pg. 47] blance of the sex to which he always pays deference. “‘I hope, Madam,’ he said, ‘a cigar does not offend you?’ “ ‘La! no, sir,’ replied our rustic friend good-naturedly, ‘ I like it.’ “My father’s geniality is always called forth by the touch of a cigar. “ ‘Perhaps, Madame,’ he said, with a smile at the corners of his mouth, ‘you would try one yourself?’ “ ‘I would,’ she answered, eagerly, and grasped the cigar my father selected, saying, ‘thank ye kindly. I s’pose I can light it at the end of yours? “ My dear, fastidious father heroically breasted this juxtaposition, and the old lady, unconscious of any thing but her keen enjoyment of the unlooked-for been, smoked away vigorously. Dear Alice, who never loses sight of her duty to wrest a possible mischance from any human being, rather verdantly suggested, ‘that the cigar might make her sick.’ “‘Mercy, child! I am used to pipes.’ “That I had already inferred from her manner of holding the cigar. She was soon pressed by the usual necessity engendered by smoking, and half rising from her seat, it was too evident that she mistook the pure plate-glass for empty space. My father let down the glass as if he had been shot; but she, nowise discomposed, even by our laughing, merely said, cooly “ ‘Why, I did not calculate right, did I?” “There are idiosyncrasies in Yankeedom—there is no doubt of it! Arrived at the cars, our close companionship, and our acquaintance too, ended, except that the woman’s husband, for she had a husband, some Touchstone whose ‘humor’ it was to ‘take that no other man would,’ asked me to put my window down, for his ‘wife was sick!’ But as I had just observed the good woman munching a bit of mince pie, I thought that coming so close upon the cigar might possibly offend her stomach more than the fresh untainted air, so I declined, as courteously as possible, with the answer I have always ready for similar requests, ‘that I keep my window open to preserve the lives of the people in the car.’ ‘That’s peculiar!’ I heard her murmur; but her serenity was nowise discomposed, either by my refusal or her ‘sickness.’ Surely the imperturbable good nature of our people is national and ‘peculiar!’*….. ___________________________________ *EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL “Happy illustration, from a smoking old woman this morning, of the refinements of railroad travel!” ________________________________________ “By the way, there were notices posted up in these cars, which reminded us that we were near the English Provinces, and under their influence. The notices ran thus: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to put their feet on the cushions, and not to spit on the floor, and to maintain a respectable cleanliness, the conductors are required to enforce these requests.’ Must we wait for the millennium to see a like request and like enforcement pervade our tobacco-chewing country? We found ourselves surrounded by intelligent people of the country habitués, who gave us all the local information we asked, told us when we came to Bryant’s Pond, and that the poor little shrunken stream, that still brawled and fretted in its narrowed channel, was the Androscoggin. “At Gorham, but seven miles from the ‘Glen-House,’ we left the cars and found a wagon awaiting passengers. ‘The houses are all closed,’ was the pleasant technical announcement of our driver; and he added, cheerfully, “’The weather has been so tedious that it was burst the bubble on Mount Washington.’ “‘The “bubble!” what the deuce does the man mean?’ exclaimed my father. I perceived that it was a bit of slang wit upon ‘out-of-season’ people, to terrify them with the ‘bulb’ having burst, and so I told my father. He solemnly replied that he did not in the least doubt the fact! And as we went on slowly making the ascent, he looked ‘sagely sad;’ dear Alice, as her happy temper is, was ‘bright without the sun.’*….. “My father made a few and faint responses to our exclamations of delight at the light wreath of mist that floated far down the mountains, and the massive clouds that dropped over their summits, so that our imaginations were not kept in abeyance by definite outlines. The air was soft, and our steeds, as if considerate of our enjoyment, prolonged it by crawling up the long ascent. We came into the ‘Glen House’ with keen appetites—a needful blessing we thought—when Mr. Thompson, the host, with solemn mien informed us he ‘was not prepared for company in October—we must expect port and beans.’ł ….. ________________________________________ *EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL “We were pitched into an open wagon at Gorham—Scottish mist—rain impending—chilled to my very vitals. The driver tells us the bulb’s already burst on Mount Washington. Continuous ascent. Not a meadow, an orehard, or a garden, but dreary mountains shrouded in fog. ł “Found the Glen House ‘closed,’ which means that all the comfortable rooms are dismantled and shut up, that you must take such fare as mine host pleases (‘pork and beans’ he promises), thank him for ‘accommodating’ you, and pay summer prices. Oh, ‘what fools we mortals are!” __________________________________________ “Oh, my poor father’s blank face! Yet blanker when we were ushered into a parlor where, instead of the cracking wood fire we had fancied indigenous in these mountains, we found one of those black ‘demons’ that have taken out of our life all the poetry of the ‘hearthstone.’ But courage! We can open the stove door and get a sparkle of light and life! “10 p.m. Before finishing my day’s journal I must tell you, ‘pour encourager les autres’ who may risk the ‘closed houses’ of October, that our host did better than he promised. Our dinner was served in a cozy little room, as neatly as a home dinner; it was hot, which a hotel dinner, in the season, never is; and that the threatened ‘pork and beans’ turned into tender fowls, fresh eggs, and plentiful accessories of vegetables and pies. William, our wagon-driv- [pg. 48] er, was metamorphosed into a waiter, and performed his part as if he were ‘native to the manner.’*….. __________________________________________ *EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL “Dinner turned out better than I expected; but where but in a Yankee tavern would one suffer the infliction of a mince pie in October?” __________________________________________ “The cloudy evening has closed in upon us early. We have eluded its tediousness by reading aloud ‘The Heir of Redcliffe,’ a charming book, which teaches more irresistibly than the ordained preacher the virtues of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. These Christian graces are vitalized in the lives of Guy and Amy. Amy does right with so much simplicity and so little effort, that one feels as if it were easy to do it; and as my task is much easier than hers as the lover is less dear than the husband, I will try. You think me cool; I do not feel so. I start and tremble at this howling wind—it reminds me that Carl is on the ocean. “I was here startled by seeing that my father was observing me. “ ‘My child,’ he said, ‘you are shaking with cold,’ (not ‘with cold,’ I could have answered). ‘These confounded stoves,’ he added, ‘keep one in an alternate ague and fever. Come, waltz round the room with your sister, and get into a glow.’ “So, singing our own music, we waltzed till we were out of breath, and Alice has seated herself at picquet with my father, who has a run of luck, ‘point! seizième! and capote!’ which puts him into high good humor—and I may write unmarked. Carl was to write me once more before his embarkation, but I can not get the letter till my return, and I have not the poor consolation of looking over the list of the steamer’s passengers and seeing the strange names of those who would seem to me happy enough to be in the same ship with him; and yet, what care they for that! Poor fellow! he will be but sorry company. I find support in the faith that I am doing my duty. He could not see it in that light, and had neither comfort for himself nor sympathy for me. I almost wish now, when I think of him in his desolation, that I could receive the worldly philosophy my old nurse offered me when, as Carl drove away, she came into my room and found me crying bitterly. She hushed me tenderly as she was used to do when I was a child; and when I said, ‘‘Hannah, it is for him, not for myself, I feel!’ ‘‘Oh! that’s nothing but a nonsense, child,’ she said. ‘Men ain’t that way; they go about among folks and get rid of feelings; it’s women that stay at home and keep ‘em alive, brooding on ‘em!’ “Why should I thus shrink from a consequence I ought to desire? But perhaps it will be easier as I go on, if it be true that ‘Each goodly thing is hardest to begin; But entered in a spacious court they see Both plain, and pleasant to be walked in.’ “Wednesday Morning. My father happened to cast his eyes across the table as I finished my last page, and he saw a tear fall on it. Throwing down his cards he said, “ ‘Come, come, children! it’s time to go to bed;’ and stooping over me, he kissed me fondly and murmured: ‘Dear, good child! I can not stand it if I see you unhappy.’ “He shall not see me so. I have risen to-day with this resolution. The rain has been pouring down all night, but at this glorious point of sight, directly under Mount Washington, we are equal to either fate—going on or staying. Mr. Thompson has again surprised us with a delicious breakfast of tender chicken, light biscuit, excellent bread, fresh eggs, and that rarest of comforts at a hotel—delicious coffee, with a brimming pitcher of cream. We wondered at all these things, usually the result of a feminine genius, for we have not heard the flutter of a petticoat in the house till we saw our respectable landlady gliding through the room. We learned from her that she was the only womankind on the diggings. Every thing is neatly done, so we bless our October star for exempting us from the careless and hurried service of the Celtic race. While it rains, we walk on the piazza, enjoying the beautiful and ever-varying effects of the clouds as they roll down the mountains, and roll off; like the shadows on our human life, dear Susan, that God’s love does both send and withdraw. “The Glen House is on the lowest ridge of the hill that rises opposite to Mount Washington, which, as its name indicates, stands head and shoulders above the other summits—having no peer. Madison and Monroe come next, on the left, and then Jefferson, who appears (characteristically?) higher than he is. In a line with Mount Washington, on the other side, are Adams, Clay, etc. These names (excepting always Washington) do not, with their recent political associations, seem quite to suit these subline, eternal mounts, but as time rolls on, the names will grow to signs of greatness, and harmonize with physical stability and grandeur. Jefferson’s head seems modeled after a European pattern. It runs up to a sharp point, and wants but accumulated masses of ice to be broken into Alpine angles. My father says there are other passes in the mountains more beautiful than this; none can be grander….. “My father has been most sweet and tender to me to-day. Whenever he lays his hand upon my head, it seems like a benediction. And Alice is so kind, projecting future pleasures and sweet solaces for me. You know how I love her little girl. To-day, while we were walking, she heard me sigh, and putting her arm around me, she said: ‘Will you let Sarah come and pass the winter with you and father?’ I trust my look fully answered her. I can not yet talk even with her as I do on paper to you—a confidential implement is a pen….. “We have all been walking, in the lowering [p. 49] twilight on the turnpike, which is making by a joint stock company, up Mount Washington. The road, by contract, is to be finished in three years; the cost is estimated at $63,000. The workmen, of course, are nearly all Irishmen, with Anglo-Saxon heads to direct them. The road is, as far as possible, to be secured by frequent culverts, and by Macadamizing it, from the force of winter torrents. But that nothing is impossible to modern science, it would seem impossible to vanquish the obstacles to the enterprise—the inevitable steepness of the ascent, the rocky precipices, etc. We amused ourselves with graduating the intellectual development of the Celtic workmen by their answers to our questions. “ ‘When is the road to be finished?’ “ ‘And, faith, Sir, it must be done before winter comes down below.’ “ ‘The next replied, ‘When the year comes round.’ And another: ‘Some time between now and never.’ “ ‘Friend,’ said I to one of them, ‘have you such high mountains in Ireland?’ “ ‘That we have, and higher—five miles high!’ Paddy is never over-crowed. “ ‘Straight up?’ I asked. “ ‘By my faith and troth, straight up, it is.’ “ ‘In what part of Ireland is that mountain?’ “ ‘In county Cork.’ “ ‘Of course, in county Cork!’ said my father, and we passed on through the debris of blasted rocks, stumps of uprooted trees, and heaps of stone, till we got far enough into the mountain to feel the sublimity of its stern, silent solitude, with the night gathering its shroud of clouds about it, and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr. Thompson’s. We had a long evening before us, but we diversified it (my father hates monotony, and was glad of ‘something different,’ as he called it) by bowling—my father pitting Alice against me. She beat me, according to her general better luck in life.”*….. __________________________________________ *EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL “Walked out this afternoon amidst precipices and uprooted trees, where Paddies, the plague of our Egypt, are making a road to the summit of Mount Washington, that men, women, and much cattle may be dragged up there, and there befogged.” __________________________________________ “ Thursday Morning, 6th October. – The weather still uncertain, but more beautiful in its effects on these grand mountains in their October glory, than I can describe to you. They are grand—Mount Washington being higher than Rhigi and Rhigi and Pilatus are majestic, even in the presence of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. The rich coloring of our autumnal foliage is unknown in Europe, and how it lights up with brilliant smiles the stern face of the mountains! Even when the sun is clouded, the beeches that skirt the evergreens look like a golden fringe, and wherever they are they ‘make sunshine in a shady place.’ The maples are flame-colored, and, when in masses, so bright that you can scarcely look steadily on them; and where they are small, and stand singly, they resemble (to compare the greater to the less) flamingos lighted on the mountain side. There is an infinite diversity of coloring—soft brown, shading off into the pale yellow, and delicate May-green. None but a White of Selborne, with his delicately defining pen, could describe them. While we stood on the piazza admiring and exclaiming, the obliging Mr. Thompson brought out a very good telescope, and adjusted it so that our eyes could explore the mountains. He pointed out the bridle-path to the summit of Mount Washington. Various obstacles have prevented our attempting the ascent. If my father would have trusted us to guides, there are none in October, nor trained horses, for as the feed is brought from below, they are sent down to the lowlands as soon as the season is over. Besides, the summits are now powdered with snow, and the paths near the summits slippery with ice; and though I like the scramble and the achievement of attaining a difficult eminence, I much prefer the nearer, better defined, and less savage views below it.* __________________________________________ *EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL “Thursday. Sitting by a window where I see nothing but these useless mountains. Slept little, and when I slept, haunted by slides, torrents, and all dire mischances. Waked by a gong! Rain and sunshine alternately, so that no mortal can tell whether to go or stay,” etc. __________________________________________ “ Guided by our good landlord, my eye had followed the path past two huge out-standing rocks, which look like Druidical monuments, to the summit of Mount Washington, where I had the pleasure of descrying and announcing the figure of a man. My father and Alice both looked, but could not make it out. I referred to Mr. Thompson, and his accustomed eye confirmed the accuracy of mine. Mr. Thompson was much exercised with conjectures as to where the traveler came from. He had seen none for the last few days in the mountains except our party, and he naturally concluded the man had made his ascent from the Crawford House. My eye seemed spell-bound to the glass. I mentally speculated upon the character and destiny of the pilgrim who, at this season, and alone, had climbed these steeps. My imagination invested him with a strange interest. He had wandered far away from the world, and above it. There was something in his mind—perhaps in his destiny—akin to the severity of this barren solitude. The spell was broken by a call from my father: ‘Come, Mary! are you glued to that glass?’ he exclaimed. ‘The rain is over, and we are off in half an hour.’ And so we were, with Thompson, Junior, for our driver—one of our young countrymen who always makes me proud, dear Susan, performing well the task of your inferior, with the capacity and self-respect of your equal. Long live the true republicanism of New-England! “My father had been rather nettled in the morning by what he thought an attempt, on the part of Mr. Thompson to take advantage of our dependence, and charge us exorbitantly for con- [p. 50] veying us thirty-three miles, to the Mountain-Notch;’ but, on talking the matter over with our host, he found that his outlay, with tolls, and other expenses, was such that he only made what every Yankee considers his birthright—‘ a good business’—out of us. So my father, being relieved from the dread of imposition, was in happy condition all day, and permitted us, without a murmur of impatience, to detain him, while we went off the road to see one of the two celebrated cascades of the neighborhood. It was the ‘Glen-Ellis Fall.’ We compromised, and gave up seeing the ‘Crystal Fall,’ a half a mile off the road on the other side; and enjoyed the usual consolation of travelers on like occasions of being told that the one we did not see was far best worth seeing. However, I hold all these wild leaps of mountain streams to be worth seeing, each having an individual beauty; and advise all who may follow in our traces, to go to the top and bottom of ‘Glen Ellis.’ “I have often tried to analyze the ever-fresh delight of seeing a water-fall, and have come to the conclusion that it partly springs from the scramble to get at the best and all the points of view, setting the blood in the most sluggish veins to dancing; for as you know, ‘Tout depend de la maniѐre que le sang circule.’ I can not describe to you the enjoyment of this day’s ride. As heart to heart, my father’s serenity answered to my cheerfulness and rewarded it. Our cup was brimming and sparkling. There was a glowing vitality in the western breeze that blew all the clouds from our spirits, and shaped those on the mountain sides into ever-changing beauty, or drove them off the radiant summits. We laughed, as the vapor condensing into the smallest of hail-stones, came pelting in our faces as if the elements had turned boys, and threw them in sport! What may not Nature be to us – play-fellow, consoler, teacher, religious minister! Strange that any one wretch should be found to live without God in the world, when the world is permeated with its Creator! “Our level road wound through the Pinkham woods in the defiles of the mountains, and at every turn gave them to us in a new aspect. It seemed to me that the sun had never shone so brightly as it now glanced into the forest upon the stems of the white birches—Wordsworth’s ‘Ladies of the Wood’—and shone on the Mosaic carpet made by the brilliant fallen leaves. We missed the summer-birds, but the young partridges abounded, and, hardly startled by our wheels, often crossed our path. We saw a fox, who turned and very quietly surveyed us, as if to ask who the barbarians were that so out of season invaded his homestead. One of us—I will not tell you which, lest you discredit the story—fancying, while the wagon was slowly ascending, to make a cross-cut on foot through some woodland, saw a bear—yes, a bear! face to face! and made, you may be sure, a forced march to the highway. The mountaineers were not at all surprised when we recounted what we fancied a hair-breadth ‘scape; but quietly told us that ‘three bears had been seen in that neighborhood lately, but bears did no harm unless provoked, or desperately hungry.’ It was not a very pleasant thought that our lives depended on the chances of Bruin’s appetite. “This meeting with the fox—the Mercury of the woods—and with the bear—the hero of many a dramatic fable – would, in the forests of the Old World, and in prolific Old World fancies, have been wrought into pretty traditions for after-ages. I might have figured as the ‘Forsaken, woeful, solitary maid, In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,’ set on by the ramping beast! And for the knight, why, it would be easy to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington, into a lover and a deliverer, whose ‘allegiance and fast fealty’ had bound him to our trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream near ‘Davis’s Crossing,’ which we were told was called ‘Nancy’s Brook.’ We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all ended in one source—man’s perjury and woman’s trust. A poor girl, some said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and singing to him, no doubt, ‘When she his evening food did dress,’ till he grew tired, and one day went forth and did not come back—and day after day she waited, but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic tale. The sun was set behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached the ‘Willey Slide,’ and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the Mountain Notch. Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels, sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from Alice’s, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that passed before he disappeared in the forest. “‘Are you frightened?’ said Alice; ‘this is a lonely road. Shall I hail the wagon?’ “ ‘Oh! no,’ I replied. “ ‘But,’ she urged, ‘this may be some fugitive from justice.’ “ ‘Nonsense, Alice; don’t you see by his air that he is a gentleman?’ “ ‘No,’ she saw nothing but that ‘he was light of foot, and anxious to escape observation.’ “I had seen more; I had seen his form who henceforward is to me as if he had passed the bourne whence no traveler returns; or, what is more probable, my imagination had lent to the figure the image that possesses it. Alice—she is a cautious little woman—was continually looking back, from fear, I from hope; but we saw [p. 51] nothing more of the traveler. The apparition had spoiled our walk. The brief twilight of October was shortened by the mountain-walls on either side of the road. We had no time to look for the cascades, and fantastic resemblances animals and human profiles that we had been forewarned to observe on the hillsides. The stars were coming out, and the full moon—indicated by the floods of light behind Mount Webster when we passed the ‘Notch’ and came upon the level area where the ‘Crawford House’ stands. Here we found my father, already seated in a rocking-chair, by a broad hearth-stone and a roaring, crackling fire. And beside these cheering types of home-contentments, he had found a gentleman from the low country, with whom he was already in animated discourse. The stranger was a fine, intelligent, genial-looking person, who proved to be a clergyman whom Alice had once before met at the Flume House. He is a true lover of Nature, and explorer of Nature’s secrets—a geologist, botanist, etc.; and he most wisely comes up to the high places, at all seasons, whenever he feels the need of refreshment to his bodily and mind’s eye. Perhaps he finds here an arcana for his theology, and I am sure that, after a study here, he may go home better able, by his high communing, to inform and elevate the minds of others. No teachers better understood the sources and means of mental power and preparation than Moses and Mohammed; and their studies were not in theological libraries, but in the deepest of nature’s solitudes. “Perhaps our friend has no direct purpose beyond his own edification in his rambles in the mountains. He is familiar with every known resort among them, and most kindly disposed to give us thoroughfare travelers information. He made for us from memory a pencil-sketch of the peaks to be seen from Mount Willard, with their names. We verified them to-day, and found the outline as true as if it had been daguerreotyped. An observation so keen, and a memory so accurate are to be envied. “This house, at the Mountain Notch is called the Crawford House. The Old Crawford House, familiar to the pioneer travelers in this region, stands a few rods from it, or rather did, till the past winter, when it was burned, and its site is now marked by charred timbers. Old Crawford’s memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his name. He actually lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait on old age—‘respect, and troops of friends.’ His son, whose stature, broad shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the Middle Ages, is driver in the season and sportsman out of it. He stood at the door this morning as we were driving off to the Falls of the Ammonoosuck, with his fowling-piece in hand, and asked leave to occupy a vacant seat in the wagon. My father was a sportsman in his youth—some forty years ago; his heart warms at the sight of a gun, and besides, I fancy he had some slight hope of mending our cheer by a brace of partridges, so he very cheerfully acquiesced in Crawford’s request. Alice and I plied him with questions, hoping to get something out of an old denizen of the woods. But he knew nothing, or would tell nothing. The ‘tongues in trees’ were far more fluent than his. But even so stony a medium had power afterward to make my heart beat. I was standing near him at the end of the Falls, and away from the rest, and I asked him (Sue, I confess I have been either thinking or dreaming of that ‘fugitive’ all night!) if he had seen a foot-traveler pass along the road the last evening or this morning? ‘No; there was few travelers any way in October.’ He vouchsafed a few more words, adding: ‘It’s a pity folks don’t know the mountains are never so pretty as in October, and sport never so smart.’ Was there ever a sportsman the dullest, most impassive, but he had some perception of woodland beauty? While we were talking, and I was seemingly measuring, with my eye, the depth of the water, as transparent as the air, my father and sister had changed their position, and come close to me. ‘Oh!’ said the man, ‘I recollect—I did see a stranger on Mount Willard this morning, when I went out with my gun; he was drawing the mountains: a great many of the young folks try to do it, but they don’t make much likeness.’ Perhaps this timely generalization of friend Crawford, prevented my father and Alice’s thoughts following the direction of mine. I know this myth is not Carl Hermann—it is not even possible it should be—and yet, the resemblance that, in my one glance, I had fancied to perceive to him and the coincidence of the sketching, had invested friend Crawford with a power to make my cheeks burn and my hands cold as ice. I stole off and looked at the deep, smooth cavities the water had welled in the rocks; but I did not escape my sister’s woman’s eye. ‘Mary dear,’ she whispered, when she joined me, ‘you are not so strong as you think yourself.’ Dear Susan, if I am not strong, I will be patient. Patience, you will say, implies a waiting for something to come. Well, let it be so. Can a spark of hope live under the ashes I have heaped upon it?..... “The rocks are very beautiful at these Falls of the Ammonoosuck. The stream, which never here can be a river, is now, by the unusual droughts of the summer, shrunk to mere rill; but even now, and at all seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! A drive anywhere in these hills ‘pays’—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the basse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark from our sportsman’s eye, and—a far easier achievement—startled the blood in my father’s veins. The instinct to kill game is, I [p. 52] believe, universal with man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters like Monkbarns, is very much of an Uncle Toby in disposition? He sprang from the wagon, borrowed Crawford’s gun, and reminding Alice and me so much of Mr. Pickwick that we laughed in spite of our terror lest he should kill—not the partridge, but himself; but luckily, he escaped unharmed—and so did the bird! Crawford secured two or three brace of them in the course of the morning’s drive. I fear we shall relish them at breakfast to-morrow, in spite of our lamentations over their untimely loss of their pleasant mountain-life. I asked our driver how they survived the winter (if haply they escaped the fowler) in these high latitudes? ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘they had the neatest was of folding their legs under their wings and lying down in the snow.’ They subsist on berries and birchen-buds—dainty fare, is it not? “We found a very comfortable dinner awaiting us, which rather surprised us, as our landlord, Mr. Lindsay—a very civil, obliging person, and a new proprietor here, I believe, had promised us but Lenten entertainment; but ‘deeds, not words,’ seems the motto of these mountaineers. In the afternoon we drove up Mount Willard – ‘Straight up Ben-Lomond did we press’— but our horses seemed to find no difficulty for themselves, and we no danger in the ascent. I shall not attempt to describe the view. I have never seen any mountain prospect resembling that of the deep ravine (abyss), with its convex mountainsides; the turnpike-road looking like a ribbon carelessly unwound, the only bit of level to be seen, and prolonged for miles. The distant mountains that bound the prospect you may see elsewhere, but this ravine, with the traces of the ‘Willey Slide’ on one side of it, has no parallel. Don’t laugh at me for the homeliness of the simile—it suggested a gigantic cradle. Here, as elsewhere, we were dazzled by the brilliancy of the October foliage, and having found a seat quite as convenient as a sofa—though, being of rock, not quite as easy—we loitered till the last golden hue faded from the highest summit; and we should have staid to see the effect of the rising moon on the summits contrasting with the black shadows of night in the abyss, but my father had observed that our driver had neglected the precaution of blanketing his horses, and as a mother is not more watchful of a sucking child than he is of the well-being of animals, it matters not whether they are his own or another’s, he begged us to sacrifice our romance to their safety. Alice and I walked down the mountain; it was but a half-hour’s easy walk…… “I have forborne talking with Alice on the subject that haunts me. I know I have her sympathy; and that should satisfy me. But this evening, as we were returning, she said: ‘Did you feel any electric influence as we sat looking at the view Crawford’s ‘stranger’ sketched this morning?’ ‘I thought of Carl,’ I honestly answered, and turned the subject. Alas! Sue, when do I not think of him! ….. “Profile House: Saturday Evening. We have again, to-day, experienced the advantage of these open mountain vehicles, so preferable to the traveling-jails called stage-coaches, which always remind me of Jonah’s traveling accommodations. Again, to-day, we have been enchanted with the brilliancy of the foliage. It is just at the culminating point of beauty, and I think it does not remain at this point more than three or four days when you perceive it is a thought less bright. Why is it that no painting of our autumnal foliage has succeeded? It has been as faithfully imitated as the colors on the pallet can copy these living, glowing colors; but those who have best succeeded—even Cole, with his accurate eye and beautiful art—has but failed. The pictures, if toned down, are dull; if up to Nature, are garish to repulsiveness. Is it not that Nature’s toning is inimitable, and that the broad o’erhanging firmament, with its cold, serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped harvest-field, temper, to the eye the intervening brilliancy, and that, within the limits of a picture, there is not sufficient expanse to reproduce these harmonies?”….. “Saturday Evening. We have driven some 23 miles—from the Mountain Notch to the Franconian hotel to-day. The weather has been delicious. The drive has been more prosaic, or approaching to it, than we have before traveled in this hill-country. This October coloring would make far tamer scenery beautiful; but I can fancy it very bleak and dismal when ‘Blow, blow November’s winds:’ whereas here, at the ‘Franconian Notch,’ you feel, as it were, housed and secured by Nature’s vast fortresses and defenses. The ‘Eagle’s Cliff’ is on one side of you, and Mount Cannon (called so from a resemblance of a rock on the summit to a cannon) on the other; and they so closely fold and wall you in that you need but a poetic stretch of the arms to touch them with either hand; and when the sun glides over the arch in the zenith above—but a four hours’ visible course in mid-winter—you might fancy yourself sheltered from the sin and sorrow that great eye witnesseth. You will accuse me, I know, dear, rational friend, of being ‘exalte,’ (vernacular, cracked,) but remember, we are alone in these inspiring solitudes, free from the disenchantment of the eternal buzzing of the summer swarms that the North gives up, and the South keeps not back. “We were received at the Profile House with a most smiling welcome by Mr. Weeks, the pro tem. host, who promises to make us ‘as comfortable as is in his power,’ and is substantiating his promise by transferring his dinner-table from the long, uncarpeted dinner-saloon, with its fearful rows of bare chairs and tables, to a well-furnished home-looking apartment, where a fire-place worthy of the Middle Ages, is already brightened with a hospitable fire. The [p. 53] great rambling hotel is vacant, and its silence unbroken, save by the hastening to and fro of our willing host, who unites all offices of service in his own person, and the pattering of his pretty little boy’s feet—the little fellow following him like his shadow, and, perchance, running away from other shadows in this great empty house. The little fellow makes music to my ear. There is no pleasanter sound than the footsteps of a child …… “I left Alice dressing for dinner. I think Alice would perform the ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked in a desert island, and my father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at these seasons, when ‘time stands still withal,’ or rather, to him keeps a snail’s fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down to the Lake—a short walk—to greet the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ as they prosaically call the wonderful head at the very summit of the headland cliff, upreared on high over the beautiful bit of water named ‘The Old Man’s Punch-bowl.’ The nomenclature of our country certainly does not indicate one particle of poetry or taste in its people. There are, to be sure, namesakes of the Old World, which intimate the exile’s loving memories, and there are scattered, here and there, euphonious and significant Indian names, not yet superseded by ‘Brownvilles’ or ‘Smithdales,’ but for the most part, one would infer that pedagogues, sophomores, and boors had presided at the baptismal font of the land. To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline, like the Sphinx, a mystery in the desert—to call it the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ is irreverence, desecration; and this exquisite little lake, lapped amidst the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose million unseen spirits may do the bidding of the heroic old Prospero who presides over it; to call this gem of the forest a ‘punch-bowl’ is a sorry travesty! I paid my homage to him while his profile cut the glowing twilight, and then sat down at the brim of the lake. Dear Susan, ‘The leaning of the close trees o’er the brim, had a sound beneath their leaves;’ and I will borrow two lines more to help out my meaning; ‘Driftings of my dream do light All the skies by day and night.’ But truly, it is mere drift-wood, not fit even to build a ‘castle in the air.’ I was startled from my musing by a rustling of the branches behind me, and I turned, expecting – not to see a bear or a fox, but my fancies incorporate. The leaves were still quivering, but I saw no apparent cause for so much disturbance—I probably had startled a brace of partridges from their roost. They brought me back to the actual world, and I came home to an excellent dinner, which I found my father practically commending. “Sunday. My father has brought us up to so scrupulous an observance of the Puritan Sabbath, that I was rather surprised, this morning, by his proposition to drive over to the Flume. His equanimity had been disturbed by finding one of the horses that had brought us here, seemingly in a dying condition. He was one of the ‘team’ that had taken us on to Mount Willard, and my father had then prophesied that he would suffer from the driver’s neglect to blanket him. He was in nowise comforted by the verification of his ‘I told you so!’ but walked to and fro from the stable, watching the remedies administered, and vituperating all youth as negligent, reckless, and hard-hearted! I think it was half to get rid of this present annoyance that he proposed the drive to the Flume, saying, as he did so: “These mountains are a great temple, my children; it matters not much where we stand to worship.’ We stopped for a half-hour at a little fall just by the roadside, called by the mountain-folk ‘The Basin,’ and by fine people, ‘The Emerald Bowl’—a name suggested by the exquisite hue of the water, which truly is of as soft and bright a green as an emerald. The stream has curiously cut its way through a rock white and smooth, and almost polished by its friction, which overhangs the deep, circular bowl like a canopy, or rather, like a half-uplifted lid, its inner side being mottled and colored like a beautiful shell. The stream glides over the brim of its sylvan bowl and goes on its way rejoicing. We loitered here for a half-hour watching the golden and crimson leaves that had dropped in, and laid in rich mosaics in the eddies of the stream. “The morning was misty, and the clouds were driven low athwart the mountains, forming, as Alice well said, pedestals on which their lofty heads were upreared. No wonder that people in mountains and misty regions become imaginative, even superstitious. These forms, falling, rising, floating over the eternal hills, susceptible of dazzling brightness, and deepening into the gloomiest of earth’s shadows, are most suggestive to a superstitious dreamer. “I shall not attempt, my friend, to describe this loveliest of all five-mile drives, from the ‘Profile House’ to the Flume under the Eagle’s Cliff, and old Prospero, and beside his lake, and the ‘Emerald Bowl,’ and then finished by the most curious, perhaps the most beautiful passage we have yet seen in the mountains,‘The Flume’—thus called probably from a homely association with the race-way of a mill. “The ravine is scarcely more than a fissure, probably made by the gradual wearing of the stream. I am told the place resembles the Bath of Pfeffers, in Switzerland; that world’s wonder can scarcely be more romantically beautiful than our Flume. The small stream, which is now reduced to a mere rill by the prolonged droughts, forces it way between walls of rock, upheaved in huge blocks like regular mason-work. Where you enter the passage, it may be some hundred yards wide, but it gradually contracts till you may almost touch either side with [p. 54] your outstretched arms. I only measured the height of the rock walls with my eye, and a woman’s measure is not very accurate—it may be one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet. Tall trees, at the summits, interlace, and where they have fallen, bridge the passage from one side to the other. Rich velvety mosses cover the rocks like a royal garment, and vines, glittering in their autumnal brightness, laid on them like rich embroidery, so that we might say, as truly as was said of the magnificence of Oriental nature, that ‘Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ But how, dear Susan, am I to show the picture to you? The sun glancing on the brilliant forest above us, and the indescribable beauty of the shrubs, golden and crimson, and fine purple, that shot out of the crevices of the rocks! It is idle to write or talk about it; but only let me impress on you that this enchanting coloring is limited to the first days of October. I am afraid it may be said of scenery as has been said of lover’s tête-a-tête talks, that it resembles those delicate fruits which are exquisite where they are plucked, but incapable of transmission. As my father can never enjoy any thing selfishly, he was particularly pleased with the nice little foot-path won from the mountain-side, and the frequent foot-bridges, that indicate the numbers that have taken this wild walk before us. My father fancies he enjoys our security from the summer swarms, but his social nature masters his theories. “Alice and I were amused this morning, just at the highest access of our enthusiasm, while we stood under a huge rock wedged in between the two walls, on looking back to see my father sitting on a bench, arranged as a point of sight, not gazing, but listening profoundly—his graceful person and beautiful old head inclined in an attitude of the deepest attention—to a loafer who had unceremoniously joined us, and who, as my father afterwards rather reluctantly confessed, was recounting to him the particulars of his recent wooing of a third Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Brown. And when we returned to our quarters at the Profile House and came down to dinner, we met our landlord at the door, his face even more than usually effulgent with smiles. “‘There has a lady and gentleman come in,’ he said, ‘and your father has no objection to their dining at table with you.’ “His voice was slightly deprecatory. I think he did not quite give us credit for our father’s affability, Of course, we acquiesced, and were afterwards edified by our brief acquaintance with the strangers—a mother and son, who had come up from the petty cares of city life for a quiet ramble among the hills—to find here ‘A peace no other season knows.’ “The mother wears widow’s weeds, and has evidently arrived at the ‘melancholy days.’ As we just now sat enjoying our evening fire, ‘My hearthstone,’ she said, ‘was never cold for seventeen years; but there is no light there now. My children are dispersed, and he who was dearest and best lies under the clods! My youngest and I hold together—I can not let him go.’ The loving companionship of a mother and a son who returns to her tenderness the support of his manly arm, never shrinking from the shadows that fall from her darkened and stricken heart, or melting those shadows in his own sunny youth—is one of the consoling pictures of life. This poor lady seems to have the love of nature, which never dies out. It is pleasant to see with what patience her son cared for the rural wealth she is amassing in her progress through the hills, the late flowers, and bright leaves, and mosses, though I have detected a boyish, mischievous smile as he stowed them away….. “We had something approaching to an adventure this evening on Echo Lake, the loveliest of all these mountain lakes, and not more than half a mile from our present inn, the Profile House. Our dear father consented to go out with us, and let Alice and me, who have been well trained at that exercise in our home lake, take our turns with him in rowing. This lake is embosomed in the forest, and lies close nestled under the mountains, which here have varied shape and beautiful outline. It takes its name from its clear echoes. We called, we sang, and my father whistled, and from the deep recesses of the hills our voices came back as if spirit called to spirit, musical and distinct. You know the fascination there is in such a scene. The day had continued misty to the last; the twilights at this season are at best short, and while my father was whistling, one after another, the favorite songs of his youth, we were surprised by nightfall. My father startled us with “ ‘Bless me, girls, what are you about?’ “It was he who was most entranced. “ ‘I can not see our landing-place!’” “Neither, with all possible straining, could our younger eyes descry it. We approached as near the shore as we dared, but could go no nearer without the danger of swamping our boat, when suddenly we perceived a blessed apparition—a white signal—made quite obvious in the dim light by a background of evergreens. We rowed toward it with all our might, wondering what kind friend was waving it so eagerly. As we approached near the shore it suddenly dropped and hung motionless, and when we landed we saw no person and heard no footstep. I untied the signal, and finding it a man’s large, fine linen handkerchief, I eagerly explored the corner for the name, but the name had evidently just been torn off. Strange! We puzzled ourselves with conjectures. My father cut us short with: “ ‘’Tis that young man at the hotel. Young folks like this sort of thing.’ “But it was not he; we found him reading to his mother, who said she was just about sending him to look after us.” Thus abruptly ended Mary Langdon’s journal- [p. 55] letter. The reason of its sudden discontinuance will be found in our own brief relation of the experience of the following morning, (Monday,) which we had from all the parties that partook in it. Our friends were to leave the Profile House on Monday, on their return to the lowlands, to go from there to the Flume House, visit “the Pool,” and then down to the pretty village of Plymouth, in New Hampshire. Mary and her sister were early, and having a spare half-hour before breakfast, went down to take a last look at Prospero and his “bowl.’ There they found a crazy, old, leaky boat, with a broken oar, and Mary, spying some dry bits of board on the shore, deftly threw them in and arranged them so that she and her sister could get in dry-shod. Alice looked doubtfully at the crazy little craft and hung back—the thought of husband and children at home is always a sedative—but her eager sister overcame her scruples, and they were soon fairly out from shore in deep water. They went on, half-floating, half-rowing, unconscious of the flying minutes. Not so their father, who after waiting breakfast “an eternity,” (as he said, possibly some five minutes!) came to the lake to recall them. Just as he came within fair sight of them, for they were not two hundred yards from him, the boat suddenly began whirling round—a veering wind rushed upon them. The poor father saw their dilemma, and could not help them. He could not swim. He screamed for help, but what likelihood that any one should hear or could aid him! Alice prudently, sat perfectly still. The oar was in Mary’s hand—she involuntarily sprang to her feet—her head became giddy, not so much, she afterward averred, with the whirling of the boat, as with the sight of her poor old father, and the sense that she had involved Alice in this peril. She plunged the oar into the water in the vain hope by firmly holding it of steadying the boat; but she dropped it from her trembling hand, and in reaching after it, she too dropped over into the water, and in her struggle she pushed the boat from her, and thus became herself beyond the possibility of her sister’s reach. Her danger was imminent—she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked for help, and help came! A plash in the water, and a strong man, with wonderful preternatural strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence of mind not to embarrass him by any struggles, and shouting a word of comfort to Alice, he swam to the shore and laid Mary in her father’s arms. He then returned to the boat, and soon brought it to shore. There are moments of this strange life of ours not to be described—feelings for which language in no organ. While such a moment sped with father and daughters, their deliverer stood apart. The father gazed upon his darling child, satisfying himself that “not a hair had perished,” but she was only “fresher than before;” and, as he afterward said, “fully recovering his wits,” he turned to thank the preserver of his children. He was standing half concealed behind a cluster of evergreens. “Come forward, my dear fellow,” he said; “for God’s sake, let me grasp your hand!” He did not move. “Oh! come,” urged Mr. Langdon. “Never mind your shirt-sleeves; it’s no time to be particular about trifles.” Still he did not move. “Oh, come! dear—Carl,” said Mary, and her lover sprang to her feet. What immediately followed was not told me, but there was no after coldness or reluctance on the part of the good father. His heart was melted and fused in gratitude and affection for his daughter’s lover. His prejudices were vanquished, and he was just as well satisfied as if they had been overcome by the slower processes of reason and conviction. The truth was, the old gentleman was not to be outdone in magnanimity. Mary’s filial devotion had prepared him to yield his opposition, and he confessed that he had, in his own secret counsel with himself, determined to recall Hermann at the end of another year, if he proved constant and half as deserving as his foolish girl thought him. “But Prospero,” he said, “had seen fit to take the business into his own hands, and setting his magic to work, had stirred up a tempest in his punch-bowl to bring these young romancers together.” But by what spell had he conjured up the lover at the critical moment? Hermann confessed that not being able to get off in the steamer of the 29th, he had delayed his embarkation for ten days, and the magic of love—the only magic left to our disenchanted world—had drawn him to the White Mountains, where he might have the consolation—a lover only could appreciate it—of breathing the same atmosphere with Mary, and possibly of seeing her, unseen. Thus he had stood on the summit of Mount Washington, when, by some mysterious magnetism, Mr. Thompson’s telescope had been pointed to it. He was the “fugitive from justice” at Willy’s Slide, the ambitious artist on Fort Willard, and the friend whose signal had brought them safely to port on Echo Lake! Hermann’s arrangements for pursuing his studies in Europe were not disturbed. The good father was in the most complying temper. He consented to have the wedding within this blessed month of October, and graciously granted the prayer of the young people that he would accompany them in their year’s visit to Europe. “Mary and I are already wedded,” said he to me, with a smile of complete satisfaction; ‘we only take this young fellow into the partnership.” It was a bright day in the outer and inner world when we parted. And thus ended our October visit to the White Hills of New Hampshire, but not our gratitude to Him who held us “In his large love and boundless thought.” [p. 56] If our friend Mary has imperfectly sketched the beauty of the Mountains, she has exaggerated nothing. We hope our readers, though perchance o’er-wearied now, may make the complete tour of these lovely places, including, as it should, the enchanting sail over Lake Winepescago, the beautiful drive by North Conway, and the ascents of Kiersarge, Chiconea, Mount Moriah, and the Red Mountain. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The White Hills in October Subject The topic of the resource Star-crossed lovers, filial piety, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, off-season tourism. Description An account of the resource The narrator presents the journal of a trip to the White Mountains by Mary Langdon, a young American woman, who has just ended a relationship with her German lover due to her father's disapproval. A mysterious stranger appears at a significant moment and changes the young woman's fortunes. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [published anonymously] Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Harper's New Monthly Magazine [edited by Alfred A. Guernsey] (December 1856): 44-56. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1856 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Margaret Erickson, D. Gussman Relation A related resource The Continental Monthly [by C. M. Sedgwick] (October 1862): 423-44. Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document 1856 Ammonoosuck Boston cigars daughters Elizabeth Barrett Browning fathers filial piety German Glen Ellis Fall Harper's New Monthly Magazine hiking hotels hunting immigration inns Irish journal Love marriage Mayflower Mohammed Moses Mount Rhigi Mount Washington Mount Webster Nancy's Brook Nature New England New Hampshire Pickwick Portland Prospero railroad restaurants Rosalind rowing Shakespeare sisters The Heir of Redcliffe Theseus tourism Travel waterfalls White Mountains Wordsworth