BY BRADFORD TORREY “And now each man bestride his hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases.” Charles Lamb. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1901 COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY BRADFORD TORREY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October, 1901...

Five or six hours of pleasant railway travel, up the course of one river valley after another,—the Merrimac, the Pemigewasset, the Baker, the Connecticut, and finally the Ammonoosuc,—not to forget the best hour of all, on the shores of Lake Winnipisaukee, the spacious blue water now lying full in the sun, now half concealed by a fringe of woods, with mountains and hills, Chocorua, Paugus, and the rest, shifting their places beyond it, appearing and disappearing as the train follows the winding t

“He would now be up every morning by break of day, walking to and fro in the valley.”— Bunyan. It was a white day, the day of the red cherry,—by the almanac the 20th of May. Once in the hill country, the train ran hour after hour through a world of shrubs and small trees, loaded every one with blossoms. Their number was amazing. I should not have believed there were so many in all New Hampshire. The snowy branches fairly whitened the woods; as if all the red-cherry trees of the country round abo

All signs threatened a day of midsummer heat, though it was only the 2d of June. Before breakfast, even, the news seemed to have got abroad; so that there was something like a dearth of music under my windows, where heretofore there had been almost a surfeit. The warbling vireo in the poplar, which had teased my ear morning after morning, getting shamelessly in the way of his betters, had for once fallen silent; unless, indeed, he had sung his stint before I woke, or had gone elsewhere to practi

I spoke a little warmly, perhaps, at the end of the forenoon chapter. Echo Lake, at the foot of it, is one of the places where I love best to linger, and to-day it was more attractive even than usual; the air of the clearest, the sun bright, the mountain woods all in young leaf, the water shining. But the black flies, which had left me undisturbed on the railroad, though I sat still by the half-hour, once I reached the lake would allow me no rest. It was twelve days since my first visit. The sno

Once more I am in old Franconia, and in a new season. With all my visits to the New Hampshire mountains, I have never seen them before in August. I came on the last day of July,—a sweltering journey. That night it rained a little, hardly enough to lay the dust, which is deep in all these valley roads, and the next morning at breakfast time the mercury marked fifty-seven degrees. All day it was cool, and at night we sat before a fire of logs in the big chimney. The day was really a wonder of clea

White Mountain woods are generally at their brightest in the last few days of September. This year I had but a week or so to stay among them, and timed my visit accordingly, arriving on the 22d. As I drove over the hills from Littleton to Franconia there were only scattered bits of high color in sight—a single tree here and there, which for some reason had hung out its autumnal flag in advance of its fellows. It seemed almost impossible that all the world would be aglow within a week; but I had

On the second day after our arrival in Franconia [11] we were following a dry, sandy stretch of valley road—on one of our favorite rounds—when a bird flew across it, just before us, and dropped into the barren, closely cropped cattle pasture on our left. Something indefinable in its manner or appearance excited my suspicions, and I stole up to the fence and looked over. The bird was a horned lark, the first one that I had ever set eyes on in the nesting season. He seemed to be very hungry, snapp

It is Sunday, May 26, the brightest, pleasantest, most comfortable of forenoons. I am seated in the sun at the base of an ancient stone wall, near the road that runs along the hillside above the Landaff Valley. Behind me is a little farmhouse, long since gone to ruin. At my feet, rather steeply inclined, is an old cattle pasture thickly strewn with massive boulders. The prospect is one of those that I love best. In the foreground, directly below, is the valley, freshly green, and, as it looks fr

The greatest ornithological novelty of our present visit to Franconia was the prairie horned larks, whose lyrical raptures, falling “from heaven or near it,” I have already done my best to describe. The rarest bird (for there is a difference between novelty and rarity) was a Cape May warbler; the most surprisingly spectacular was a duck. Let me speak first of the warbler. Two years ago I found a Cape May settled in a certain spot in an extensive tract of valley woods. The manner of the discovery

Mount Agassiz is rather a hill than a mountain; there is no glory to be won in climbing it, unless, perhaps, by very small children and elderly ladies; but if a man is in search of a soul-filling prospect he may climb higher and see less. The road to it, furthermore (I speak as a Franconian), is one of those that pay the walker as he goes along. Every rod of the five miles is worth traveling for its own sake, especially on a bright and comfortable August morning such as the Fates had this time s