tory of forest and flower,
All the red glory of sunsetting hour,
Comes till I seem to lie lapped in bright dreams
Lulled by the lullaby murmur of streams.

_James Kennedy._

* * *

Had I time to picture this level, grass-grown street, with ten or
fifteen square box-looking houses, windowless, empty and desolate; a
school-house with its long vacation of twenty-three years; a bank with
heavy shutters and ponderous locks, whose floor, Time, the universal
burglar, had undermined; two large furnaces with great rusty wheels,
whose occupation was gone forever; a thousand tons of charcoal,
untouched for a quarter of a century; thousands of bricks waiting for a
builder; a real haunted house, whose flapping clap-boards contain
more spirits than the Black Forests of Germany--a village so utterly
desolate, that it has not even the vestige of a graveyard--if I could
picture to you this village, as it appeared to me that weird midnight,
lying so quiet,

"under the light of the solemn moon,"

you would realize as I did then, that truth is indeed stranger than
fiction, and that Goldsmith in _his_ "Deserted Village" had not
overdrawn the description of desolate Auburn.

By special request, we were permitted to sleep that night in the
Haunted House and no doubt listened to the first crackling that the
old fire-place had known for years. Many bedsteads in the old building
were still standing, so we only needed bedding from the hotel to
make us comfortable. As we went to sleep we expressed a wish to be
interviewed in the still hours of the night by any ghosts or spirits
who might happen to like our company; but the spirits must have been
absent on a visit that evening, for we slept undisturbed until the old
bell, suspended in a tree, rang out the cheery notes of "trout and
pickerel." We understand that the Haunted House from that night
lost its old-time reputation, and is now frequently brought into
requisition as an "Annex," whenever the hotel or "Club House," as it
is now called, happens to be full. The "Deserted Village" is rich in
natural beauty. Lakes Henderson and Sanford are near at hand, and the
lovely Preston Ponds are only five miles distant.

* * *

Stately and awful was the form of Tahawas, the old
scarred warrior king of the mountains, and yet it owns
pines that sing like the sea, brooks that warble like the
robin, and flowers that scent the air like the orange-blossoms