Our shout to the guide would have roused him out of a death-slumber.  He came down the trail with the agility of an aged deer:  never was so glad a sound in his ear, he said, as that shout.  It was in a very jubilant mood that we emptied the boat of water, pushed off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-mile row through the black waters of the winding, desolate channel, and over the lake, whose dark waves were tossed a little in the morning breeze.  The trunks of dead trees stand about this lake, and all its shores are ragged with ghastly drift-wood; but it was open to the sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured all the mountain-ranges we had a sense of escape and freedom that almost made the melancholy scene lovely.

How lightly past hardship sits upon us!  All the misery of the night vanished, as if it had not been, in the shelter of the log cabin at Mud Pond, with dry clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bear fits him in the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire, solicitude about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffering, and willingness to hear the now growing tale of our adventure.  Then came, in a day of absolute idleness, while the showers came and went, and the mountains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, that perfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling of strength without any inclination to use it, and in a delicious languor which is too enjoyable to be surrendered to sleep.

HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND

By Charles Dudley Warner

New England is the battle-ground of the seasons.  It is La Vendee.  To conquer it is only to begin the fight.  When it is completely subdued, what kind of weather have you?  None whatever.

What is this New England?  A country?  No:  a camp.  It is alternately invaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of the tropics.  Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoasts are fringed with mosquitoes.  There is for a third of the year a contest between the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the gulf.  The result of this is a compromise:  the compromise is called Thaw.  It is the normal condition in New England.  The New-Englander is a person who is always just about to be warm and comfortable.  This is the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made.  A person thoroughly heated or frozen is good for nothing.  Look at the Bongos.  Examine (on the map) the Dog-Rib nation.  The New-Englander, by incessant activity, hopes to get warm.  Edwards made his theology.  Thank God, New England is not in Paris!

Hudson’s Bay, Labrador, Grinnell’s Land, a whole zone of ice and walruses, make it unpleasant for New England.  This icy cover, like the lid of a pot, is always suspended over it:  when it shuts down, that is winter.  This would be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf Stream.  The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing from under the ribs of the equator,—­a white knight of the South going up to battle the giant of the North.  The two meet in New England, and have it out there.