discoverers
of that upland region of beauty, unparalleled, so far as we know, in all
the traveled parts of our country. And for the benefit of those who
shall come after us, for all who have their highest enjoyment, perhaps
their best instruction, in Nature's 'free school,' we intended to give
some brief notices of our tour, in the hope of extending the traveling
season into October by imparting some faint idea of the startling beauty
of this brilliant month in the mountains; but what we might have said
was happily superseded.

At a little inn in a small town, after we came down from the 'high
places,' we met a party of friends who had preceded us along the whole
route by a day. A rain came on, and we were detained together for
twenty-four hours. We agreed to pass the evening in a reciprocal reading
of the brief notes of our journey. It came last to the turn of my
friend, a very charming young person, whom I shall take the liberty to
call Mary Langdon. She blushed and stammered, and protested against
being a party to the contribution.

'Mine,' she said, 'is a long letter to my cousin, which I began before
we left home.'

'So much the better,' we rejoined, 'for the pleasure will be the
longer.'

'But it has been written in every mood of feeling.'

'Therefore,' we urged, 'the more variety.'

At last, driven to the wall, she threw a nice morocco letter-case into
my lap, saying:

'Take it and read it to yourself, and you will see why I positively can
not read it aloud.'

So we gave up our entreaties. I read the letter-journal after I went to
my room. The reading cheated me of an hour's sleep; perhaps because I
had just intensely enjoyed the country my friend described; and in the
morning I begged Miss Langdon's permission to publish it. She at first
vehemently objected, saying it would be in the highest degree indelicate
to publish so much of her own story as was inextricably interwoven with
the journey.

'But, dear child,' I urged, 'who that reads THE CONTINENTAL knows you?
And besides, when this is published, (if indeed the Messrs. Editors of
that popular journal graciously permit it to see the light,) you will be
on the other side of the Atlantic; and before you return, this record
will be forgotten, for, alas! we contributors to Monthlies do not write
for immortality.'

'But for the briefest mortality I am not fitted to write,' she pleaded.

I rather smiled at the novelty of one hesitating to write for th