Now to get back to the Post Road, where the pace is not quite so
hot-foot. As the next town is Kinderhook, some fourteen miles away,
there is plenty of time to view the beauties of nature and fill one's
nostrils with its rich perfumes. Most of the year's work in the fields
is finished; here and there the shocks are being overhauled for the
corn, which is shucked as gathered, while the pumpkins are still
accumulating sunshine for the golden Thanksgiving pie. From the barn
yards come the pounding of the steam thresher or the creak of a
windlass, suggesting that the hay crop is being baled. Everything is
busy but the cows, who evidently do not like frosting on their cake
and, having the day before them, can afford to wait till the good sun
comes along to undo the work which has kept Jack Frost so busy all
night.

The Catskills or Blue Mountains, as they are known from this distance,
fill the western horizon, while the beautiful landscapes sloping down
toward the river are so exquisite that the traveler involuntarily
pauses to take it all in. For a goodly portion of the time the road
keeps well up along a side hill, giving an extensive view over the
valley beneath and to the mountains beyond--the autumn colors and
softness are like the fairy dreams of childhood. With the blood
dancing under the influence of the brisk morning air, walking is a
luxury, and the glow that comes with the exercise, as well as every
sight and sound, a new found joy.

The people hereabouts, while used to all sorts of freaks, can hardly
understand how one can idly walk through the country with no higher
ambition than the taking of a picture here and there, and many are the
questions to be answered as to the whyness of the whichness, the old
farmer generally going on with a dubious shake of the head, convinced
that there is a screw loose somewhere.

[Sidenote: _FARMER FOLK._]

A farmer, on whose load of potatoes I rode into Kinderhook, thinks
farming doesn't pay--would have been better off if he had worked at
days' work all this time. He was cheerful, however, and wholly free
from care; his horses were not matched, one doing all the pulling, the
other all the sojering, and they went their own gait without
interference from him. "Apples! Why apples aren't worth picking this
year." It happened that I fell in with the other kind near Stone Mill.
He made $1,000 from apples alone last year; would not make so much
this season, but they were well wo