he mountain from the village of Stowe in very ignoble
fashion,--in a wagon,--and was three hours on the passage. One of the
"hands" at the Summit House occupied the front seat with the driver, and
we were hardly out of the village before a seasonable toothache put him
in mind of his pipe. Would smoking be offensive to me? he inquired. What
could I say, having had an aching tooth before now myself? It was a
pleasure almost beyond the luxury of breathing mountain air to see the
misery of a fellow-mortal so quickly assuaged. The driver, a sturdy
young Vermonter, was a man of different spirit. He had never used
tobacco nor drunk a glass of "liquor," I heard him saying. Somebody had
once offered him fifty cents to smoke a cigar.

"Why didn't you take it?" asked his companion in a tone of wonder.

"Well, I'm not that kind of a fellow, to be bought for fifty cents."

As we approached the base of the mountain, a white-throated sparrow was
piping by the roadside.

"I love to hear that bird sing," said the driver.

It was now my turn to be surprised. Our man of principle was also a man
of sentiment.

"What do you call him?" I inquired, as soon as I could recover myself.

"Whistling Jack," he answered; a new name to me, and a good one; it
would take a nicer ear than mine to discriminate with certainty between
a white-throat's voice and a school-boy's whistle.

The morning had promised well, but before we emerged from the forest as
we neared the summit we drove into a cloud, and, shortly afterward, into
a pouring rain. In the office of the hotel I found a company of eight
persons, four men and four women, drying themselves about the stove.
They had left a village twenty miles away at two o'clock that morning
in an open wagon for an excursion to the summit. Like myself, they had
driven into a cloud, and up to this time had seen nothing more distant
than the stable just across the road, within a stone's toss of the
window, and even that only by glimpses. One of the party was a doctor,
who must be at home that night. Hour after hour they watched the clouds,
or rather the rain (we were so beclouded that the clouds could not be
seen), and debated the situation. Finally, at three o'clock, they got
into their open wagon, the rain pelting them fiercely, and started for
the base. Doubtless they soon descended into clear weather, but not till
they were well drenched. Verily the clouds are no respecters of persons.
It is nothing to th