ed to be taken among mysterious mountains, for
Summer holidays: Do people really live in such beautiful places all the
year round? Do they live there just like ordinary people in towns, go
about ordinary businesses, live ordinary lives? It seemed to me then, as
it seems to me still, that such places should be kept sacred, like
fairyland, or should, at least, be the background of high and romantic
action, like the scenery in operas. To think of a valley so beautiful as
that through which we were walking being put to any other use than that
of beauty seems preposterous; but do you know what that beautiful valley
was doing, while Colin and I were thus poetizing it, adoring its
outlines and revelling in its tints? It was just quietly growing
potatoes. Yes! we had mostly passed through the apple country. This
garden of Eden, this Vale of Enna, was a great potato country. And we
learned, too, that its inhabitants were by no means so pleased with
beautiful Cohoctori Valley as we were. Here, we gathered, was another
beautiful ne'er-do-well of Nature, too occupied with her good looks to be
fit for much else than prinking herself out with wild-flowers, and
falling into graceful attitudes before her mirror--and there were mirrors
in plenty, many streams and willows, in Cohocton Valley; everywhere, for
us, the mysterious charm of running water. Once this idle daughter of
Ceres used to grow wheat, wheat "in great plenty," but now she could be
persuaded to grow nothing but potatoes.

All this and much more we learned from a friend who drew up beside us in
a buggy, as I was drinking from a gleaming thread of water gliding down a
mossed conduit of hollowed tree-trunks into an old cauldron sunk into the
hillside, and long since turned in ferns and lichen. Colin was seated
near by making a sketch, as I drank.

"I wouldn't drink too much of that water, lads," said the friendly voice
of the dapper little intelligent-faced man in the buggy.

What! not drink this fairy water?

"Why, you country folk are as afraid of fresh water as you are of fresh
air," I answered, laughing.

"All right, it's up to you--but it's been a dry Summer, you know."

And then the little man's attention was taken by Colin.

"Sketching?" he asked, and then he said, half shyly, "Would you mind my
taking a look how you do it?" and, climbing down from his buggy, he came
and looked over Colin's shoulder. "I used to try my hand at it a bit when
I was a boy, but thos