ith which
he is rearing the two beautiful, black-eyed, raven-haired little
girls, proves that he will not. But Smith has no professional calling
or business, and when his digestion troubles him, he has visions of
the alms-house, and the Potters' Field, and of two mendicant little
girls, while his endorsement would be regarded as good at the bank for
a hundred thousand dollars.
Spalding, as everybody within a hundred leagues of the capitol knows,
is a lawyer of eminence, full of good-nature, always cheerful, always
instructive; a troublesome opponent at the bar; a man of genial
sympathies and a big heart. If I have given him, as well as Smith, a
_nom de plume_, it is out of regard for their modesty. We arranged to
meet at the cars, the next morning at six, each with a rifle and
fishing rod, to be away for a month among the deer and the trout,
floating over lakes the most beautiful, and along rivers the
pleasantest that the sun ever shone upon.
CHAPTER II.
HURRAH! FOR THE COUNTRY!
Hurrah! Hurrah! We are in the country--the glorious country! Outside
of the thronged streets; away from piled up bricks and mortar; outside
of the clank of machinery; the rumbling of carriages; the roar of the
escape pipe; the scream of the steam whistle; the tramp, tramp of
moving thousands on the stone sidewalks; away from the heated
atmosphere of the city, loaded with the smoke and dust, and gasses of
furnaces, and the ten thousand manufactories of villainous smells. We
are beyond even the meadows and green fields. We are here alone with
nature, surrounded by old primeval things. Tall forest trees, mountain
and valley are on the right hand and on the left. Before us,
stretching away for miles, is a beautiful lake, its waters calm and
placid, giving back the bright heavens, the old woods, the fleecy
clouds that drift across the sky, from away down in its quiet depths.
Beyond still, are mountain ranges, whose castellated peaks stand out
in sharp and bold relief, on whose tops the beams of the descending
sun lie like a mantle of silver and gold. Glad voices are ringing;
sounds of merriment make the evening joyous with the music of the wild
things around us. Hark! how from away off over the water, the voice of
the loon comes clear and musical and shrill, like the sound of a
clarion; and note how it is borne about by the echoes from hill to
hill. Hark! again, to that clanking sound away up in the air; metallic
ringing, like the t
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