, soliloquizing upon men and things in Arabic and
Hindostanee, for he scorns English and talks in his sleep. There is
_Bobby_, the grossbeak, brought to the door in pin feathers and skin
like oiled silk by an Indian. His history is tragic: this Indian brained
the whole family and an assortment of relatives; Bobby alone remaining
to brood over the massacre, was sold into bondage for two bits and a
tin dipper without the bottom. The sun seems to lift his gloom, for he
sings a little, sharpens his bill with great gusto and tomahawks a bit
of fruit, as though dealing vengeance upon the destroyer of his race.

[Illustration: Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite, in 1869]

When shall I see another such cabin as this--its great fireplaces, and
the loft heaping full of pumpkins? O, Yosemite! O, halcyon days, and
bed-time at eight P.M., tucking in for ten good hours and up again at
six; good eatings and drinkings day by day, mugs of milk and baked
squash forever, plenty of butter to our daily bread; letters at wide
intervals, and long, uninterrupted "thinks" about home and friends (as
the poet of the "Hermitage" writes in one of his letters). Shall I ever
again sit for two mortal hours hearing a housefly buzz in the window and
thinking it a pleasant voice! But alas! those restless days, when the
air was full of driving leaves and I could find nothing on earth to
comfort me.

I leave this morning. Opportunity takes me by the hand and leads me
away. The heart leaps with emotion: everything is momentous in a quiet
life. This is the portal we entered one deepening dusk. Its threshold
will soon be cushioned with snow; let us hasten on. If I were asked when
is the time to visit Yosemite, I should reply: Go in the spring; see the
freshets and the waterfalls in their glory, and the valley in its fresh
and vivid greenness. Go again, by all means, in the autumn, when the
woods are powdered with gold dust and a dreamy haze sleeps in the long
ravines; when the stars sparkle like crystals and the mornings are
frosty; when the clouds visit us in person, and the trees look like
crayon sketches on a vapory background, and the cliffs like leaning
towers traced in sepia on a soft ground glass. Go in spring and autumn,
if possible. I should choose autumn of the two; but go at any hazard,
and do not rest till you have been. You can enter and go out at this
portal. Passing seaward, to the left, out of the gray and groping mists
a form, arises, monstrous and a