ses of ice to be broken into Alpine
angles. My father says there are other passes in the mountains more
beautiful than this--none can be grander.

* * * * *

My father has been most sweet and tender to me to-day, dear Susan.
Whenever he lays his hand upon my head or shoulder, it seems like a
benediction; and Alice is so kind, projecting future pleasures and sweet
solaces for me. You know how I love her little girl. To-day, while we
were walking, she heard me sigh, and putting her arm around me, she
said: 'Will you let Sara come and pass the winter with you and father?'
I trust my look fully answered her. I can not yet talk even with her as
I do on paper to you--a kind of confidential implement is a pen.

* * * * *

We have all been walking, in the lowering twilight, on the turnpike,
which is making by a joint-stock company, up Mount Washington, The road,
by contract, is to be finished in three years; the cost is estimated at
sixty-three thousand dollars. The workmen, of course, are nearly all
Irishmen, with Anglo-Saxon heads to direct them. The road is, as far as
possible, to be secured by frequent culverts, and by macadamizing it,
from the force of winter torrents. But that nothing is impossible to
modern science, it would seem impossible to vanquish the obstacles to
the enterprise, the inevitable steepness of the ascent, the rocky
precipices, etc. We amused ourselves with graduating the intellectual
development of the Celtic workmen by their answers to our questions:
'When is the road to be finished?' 'And, faith, sir, it must be done
before winter comes, down below.' The next replied: 'When the year comes
round.' And another: 'Some time between now and niver.' 'Friend,' said I
to one of them, 'have you such high mountains in Ireland?' 'Yis, indeed,
that we have, and higher--five miles high!' Paddy is never over-crowed.
'Straight up?' I asked. 'By my faith and troth, straight up, it is.' 'In
what part of Ireland is that mountain?' 'In county Cork.' 'Of course, in
county Cork!' said my father, and we passed on through the _debris_ of
blasted rocks, stumps of uprooted trees, and heaps of stones, till we
got far enough into the mountain to feel the sublimity of its stern,
silent solitude, with the night gathering its shroud of clouds about it,
and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr.
Thompson's. We had a long evening before us,