r her agile body to either State on the
approach of messengers of the court; and I'll be hanged if I didn't
think that her nonchalant rumination of the weed, combined with her
lofty moral attitude, added something to the picture."

The Friend said that he was quite willing to join in the extremest
defense of the privileges of beauty,--that he even held in abeyance
judgment on the practice of dipping; but when it came to chewing, gum
was as far as he could go as an allowance for the fair sex.

"When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment..."

The rest of the stanza was lost, for the Professor was splashing through
the stream. No sooner had we descended than the fording of streams
began again. The Friend had been obliged to stipulate that the Professor
should go ahead at these crossings, to keep the impetuous nag of the
latter from throwing half the contents of the stream upon his slower and
uncomplaining companion.

What a lovely country, but for the heat of noon and the long
wearisomeness of the way!--not that the distance was great, but miles
and miles more than expected. How charming the open glades of the
river, how refreshing the great forests of oak and chestnut, and what a
panorama of beauty the banks of rhododendrons, now intermingled with the
lighter pink and white of the laurel! In this region the rhododendron is
called laurel and the laurel (the sheep-laurel of New England) is called
ivy.

At Worth's, well on in the afternoon, we emerged into a wide, open
farming intervale, a pleasant place of meadows and streams and decent
dwellings. Worth's is the trading center of the region, has a post
office and a saw-mill and a big country store; and the dwelling of the
proprietor is not unlike a roomy New England country house. Worth's
has been immemorially a stopping-place in a region where places of
accommodation are few. The proprietor, now an elderly man, whose
reminiscences are long ante bellum, has seen the world grow up about
him, he the honored, just center of it, and a family come up into the
modern notions of life, with a boarding-school education and glimpses of
city life and foreign travel. I fancy that nothing but tradition and
a remaining Southern hospitality could induce this private family to
suffer the incursions of this wayfaring man. Our travelers are not apt
to be surprised at anything in American life, but they did not expect to
find a house in this regio