the wall of the best room the “Family of Horace Greeley,” in mezzotint, looked down through clouded glass and a veneered frame.  The county map hung vis-a-vis.  A family record, wherein a pale infant was cradled in saffron, and schooled in pink, passing through a rainbow-tinted life that reached the climax of color at the scarlet and gold bridal, and ended in a sea-green grave; this record, with a tablet for appropriate inscriptions under each epoch in the family history, was still further enriched with lids of stained isinglass carefully placed over the domestic calendar, as much as to say, “What is written here is not for the public eye.”  On the triangular shelf in the corner, stood the condensed researches of all Arctic explorers, in one obese volume; its twin contained the revelations of African discoveries boiled down and embellished with numberless cuts; a Family Physician, one volume of legislative documents, and three stray magazines, with a Greek almanac, completed the library.  So, even in the primeval state, we were not without food for our minds as well as exercise for our muscles.  After a time, even the dance ceased to attract us.  The Artist had lined the walls of his chamber with brilliant sketches; the kid clamored for home.

I suppose we might have tarried a whole summer and still found some turn in the brook, some vista in the wood, some cluster of isolated trees, to hold us entranced; for the peculiar glory of the hour transfigured them, and the same effect was never twice repeated.  Moreover, we at last grew intolerant of one great annoyance.  You all have known it as we knew it, and doubtless endured it with as little grace.  Is there anything more galling than the surpassing impudence of country flies?  We resolved to return to town, and returned close upon the heels of our resolution.  Again we threaded the dark windings of the wood, and bade farewell to every object that had become endeared to us.  We wondered how soon change would lay its hand upon this primeval beauty.  We approached the logging-camp.  Presto! in the brief interval since our first glimpse of the forests above it, the hills had been shorn of their antique harvest, and the valley was a place of desolation and of death.

It seemed incredible that the dense growth of gigantic trees could be so soon dragged to market.  There was a famous tree—­we saw the stump still bleeding and oozing up—­which, three feet from the ground, measured eleven and a half feet one way by fourteen feet the other.  When its doom was sealed, a path was cut for it and a soft bed made for it to lie on.  The land was graded, and covered with a cushion of soft boughs.  Had the tree fallen on uneven ground, it would have been shattered; if it had swerved to right or left, nothing but fire could have cleared the wrecks.