If I Could Raise That Echo, Sir, Every
Day At Command, I'd Give A Thousand Dollars For It.
It would be
worth all the money to a house like this." And he waved his hand
about from hill to hill, pointing out in graceful curves the lines
which the sounds would take.
Had destiny not called on Mr.
Plaistead to keep an American hotel, he might have been a poet.
My traveler, however, unless time were plenty with him, would pass
Mr. Plaistead, merely lighting a friendly cigar, or perhaps
breaking the Maine liquor law if the weather be warm, and would
return to Gorham on the railway. All this mountain district is in
New Hampshire; and, presuming him to be capable of going about the
world with his mouth, ears, and eyes open, he would learn much of
the way in which men are settling themselves in this still
sparsely-populated country. Here young farmers go into the woods
as they are doing far down West in the Territories, and buying some
hundred acres at perhaps six shillings an acre, fell and burn the
trees, and build their huts, and take the first steps, as far as
man's work is concerned, toward accomplishing the will of the
Creator in those regions. For such pioneers of civilization there
is still ample room even in the long-settled States of New
Hampshire and Vermont.
But to return to my traveler, whom, having brought so far, I must
send on. Let him go on from Gorham to Quebec and the heights of
Abraham, stopping at Sherbrooke that he might visit from thence the
Lake of Memphra Magog.
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