ly 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, and, as you know, '_tout
depend de la maniere que le sang circule_.'

I can not describe to you, my dear Susan, 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 hailstones, 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 danced 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 legends or traditions for after-ages. I might have figured a