It Was
A Warm And Cheerful Fog, Stirred By Little Wind, But Moving,
Shifting, And Boiling As By Its Own
Volatile nature, rolling up black
from below and dancing in silvery splendor overhead As a fog it could
not have
Been improved; as a medium for viewing the landscape it was
a failure and we lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in a
Russian bath, to await revelations.
We waited two hours without change, except an occasional hopeful
lightness in the fog above, and at last the appearance for a moment
of the spectral sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promise
vouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. There it was
again; and this time the fog was so thin overhead that we caught
sight of a patch of blue sky a yard square, across which the curtain
was instantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the fog boiled
up from the valley caldrons thicker than ever. But the spell was
broken. In a moment more Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" and
before we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky overhead as
big as a farm. "See! quick!" The old man was dancing like a
lunatic. There was a rift in the vapor at our feet, down, down,
three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo! lifting out of it
yonder the tawny side of Dix, - the vision of a second, snatched away
in the rolling fog. The play had just begun.
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