u fancy
bowls of warm milk--milk that declares a creamy dividend before morning?
Here is a fine fowl of our own raising--one that has seen Yosemite in
its glory and in its gloom; it ought to be good eating, and I can affirm
that it is. That's a dinner for you, and one where you can begin on pie
the first thing, if your soul craves it, which it frequently does.

A storm brewing, and rain in the lower valley. Never mind, there is no
hurry here; one blushes to be caught worrying in the august presence of
these mountains.

What can I do this stormy afternoon? Stop within doors and sit at the
window; a small grossbeak overhead, and we two looking out upon the rain
and fog. It is a mile nearly to that wall opposite, but look up high as
I can from my window I see no strip of sky. Here is a precipice of
homely, almost hideous-looking rock, and above it a hanging garden;
those pines in that garden are a hundred feet and more in height:
measure the second cliff by their proportions--how far is it, think you,
to the garden above? A thousand feet, perhaps; and three, four--no, six
of these terraces before you touch blue sky. Oh, what a valley! and
where else under heaven are we sunk forty fathoms deep in shadow? But
the sun is up yet, and there floats an eagle in its golden ray. I like
to watch the last beams burn out in that upper gallery among the pines.
There is a moment given us at sunset when we may partly realize the
inexpressible sweetness of the eternal day that is promised us--a dim,
religious light. There is no screen or tint soft enough to render the
effect perfectly. Only these few seconds at sunset seem to hint
something of its surpassing tenderness.

What cloud effects! Look up!--a break in the heavens, and beyond it the
shoulder of a peak weighing some billions of tons, but afloat now, as
soft in outline as the mists that envelop it. What masses of clouds
tumble in upon us! The sky is obscured, night is declared at once, and
the fowls go to roost at three P.M. How is the Fall in this weather? A
silver braid dropped from one cloud to another. Its strands parted and
joined again, lost and found in its own element. Leaping from its dizzy
eyrie in the clouds, itself most cloud-like, it is lost in a whirlwind
of foam. Now it is as a voice heard faintly above the wind, borne hither
and thither. Long, stinging nights, plenty of woolen blankets, and
delicious sleep. Then the evenings, so cosy around the fire. H---- reads