* * * *

Towards the dimness of evening a half-length figure appearing at a
window,--the blackness of the background, and the light upon the face,
cause it to appear like a Rembrandt picture.

* * * * *

On the top of Wachusett, butterflies, large and splendid; also bees in
considerable numbers, sucking honey from the alpine flowers. There is a
certain flower, a species of Potentilla, I think, which is found on
mountains at a certain elevation, and inhabits a belt, being found
neither above nor below it. On the highest top of Wachusett there is a
circular foundation, built evidently with great labor, of large, rough
stones, and rising perhaps fifteen feet. On this basis formerly rose a
wooden tower, the fragments of which, a few of the timbers, now lie
scattered about. The immediate summit of the mountain is nearly bare and
rocky, although interspersed with bushes; but at a very short distance
below there are trees, though slender, forming a tangled confusion, and
among them grows the wild honeysuckle pretty abundantly, which was in
bloom when we were there (Sunday, June 17th). A flight of rude stone
steps ascends the circular stone foundation of the round tower. By the
by, it cannot be more than ten feet high, at the utmost, instead of
fifteen.

The prospect from the top of Wachusett is the finest that I have
seen,--the elevation being not so great as to snatch the beholder from
all sympathy with earth. The roads that wind along at the foot of the
mountain are discernible; and the villages, lying separate and
unconscious of one another, each with their little knot of peculiar
interests, but all gathered into one category by the observer above
them. White spires, and the white glimmer of hamlets, perhaps a dozen
miles off. The gleam of lakes afar, giving life to the whole landscape.
Much wood, shagging hills and plains. On the west, a hill-country,
swelling like waves, with these villages sometimes discovered among
them. On the east it looks dim and blue, and affects the beholder like
the sea, as the eye stretches far away. On the north (?) appears
Monadnock, in his whole person, discernible from the feet upwards,
rising boldly and tangibly to the sense, so that you have the figure
wholly before you, fair and blue, but not dim and cloudlike.

On the road from Princeton to Fitchburg we passed fields which were
entirely covered with the mountain-laurel in full bloom,-