Far Across The Cultivated Reaches, The Smoothly Flowing Ridges Printed Their Faint Outlines Along The Horizon In Gray Veils, Resembling A Far-Distant Mass Of Water; Nearer, The Ranges Were Blue-Gray While Those Next To Them Wore A Delicate Shade Of Ethereal Blue.

The peaks still nearer were clothed in a misty veil of deeper blue while high hills ranked themselves on

Each side of us with their forests of varying shades of green. Hemlock and pine made dark green patches interspersed with the brighter green of maple, tulip, poplar and beech, enlivened with the frosty blossoms of the chestnut and the creamy tints of the basswood; then there was the rich green of the meadows, the silvery bluegreen of the oats fields, and the golden green of the ripening wheat - all so well blended and harmonized by that mysterious illuminating veil of blue that it challenged the admiration of the most critical observer. On such glorious days as these we seem to imbibe the gladness of the hills. Every nerve thrills and vibrates, and the happy songs of the birds, the myriad insect voices, the softly singing pines, make no more music than our own happy hearts.

What a place is this in which to dine, while the noonday sun sends his sweltering rays on the valley below! Away with your grand hotels with their pretentions of cleanliness and comfort, away with your stuffy restaurants with semi-intoxicating odors of beeves long slaughtered and fish long hooked or chicken a-la- King, whose husky voices have long since ceased to awaken the sleeping farm hands. Away with all these, we say, and let us dine in Nature's terraced roof garden at Hotel de Roadside at the Sign of the Running Board or White Pine Bough. Give us some fresh baked buns with country butter and honey, a dish of delicious berries picked by our own hands fresh from the bushes, a drink of sparkling ale from Nature's fountain among the cool fern-clad rocks, and we shall not lament the fact that we are so far removed from the public boarding house! Here in place of soulless melodies issuing from automatic players we have the heavenly notes of the woodthrush, the clear call of the crested titmouse, and the wild ringing notes of the cardinal. A matchless trio, accompanied by the vagrant breezes played upon the tree-harps, seconded by the singing of distant waterfalls. With greater reverence one breaks bread out here where spicy aromatic fragrance drifts by. Here you have become a pilgrim unawares, for before you are stately tulip poplars and graceful hemlocks like long sought shrines, both reflecting the Creator. Our table flowers were the pungent burgamot amid its border of sweet- scented fern, but it would have been useless to tear them from their places so near to our table did they grow. Other travelers pass along the highway and these very ferns and flowers may be to them "another sacred scripture," as Thoreau would phrase it, cheering them along the road of life.

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