ron ring with a hammer to strike it. The ring
vibrates better if it's split; and you could see nothing quainter in
Holland. There was a very odd monument, too, which I loved. I think it
was in the nice, wide-streeted village of Pompton. It might have been a
Titan helmet smashed by a bomb, and I should have loved to stay and find
out all about it!

We'd come into northern New Jersey at Oakland, so no wonder we saw
splendid cedars, for New Jersey has lots of cedars and heaps of history,
and is proud of both. I hadn't realized that it would be such a
beautiful state of forest-clad hills, lakes and rivers that mingle so
you can't tell where they begin or end, and villages walled by woods and
tied together by silver ribbons of river or brook. This is the northern
part I'm talking about; the south is flat, where it becomes seacoast.

Along bowery roads to Stockholm, Franklin, Lafayette we passed (later in
the year the goldenrod must be like a sunburst there!), and motors, big
and little, weave their way democratically among lazy-looking,
old-fashioned chaises and slender "buggies." The "going" was always
good, and there was some delicious "coasting" down one long, long hill
almost like a mountainside. How Jack loved the cozy farmhouses and red
barns which were so becoming to the black and white cattle grazing in
the valleys; and the slender waving corn like fairy dancers in jewelled
head-dresses! Some of the barns were so big, the houses they belonged
to reminded him of little mothers who had produced giant children. The
homelike effect of all these gentle hills and flowery valleys and
floating blue mist wreaths appealed curiously to the heart, like minor
music; yet there were grand things, too: here and there a noble
limestone cliff; a gloomy wood of hemlocks where it seemed _anything_
might happen; a mossy dark ravine, as at Branchville; and all the large
lakes or "ponds," so unexpected each time when you come in sight of
them.

After a dear little town called Layton (with a river singing it to
sleep) we turned off to the right for Dingman's Ferry, and then felt we
were really on the way to the Delaware Water Gap. We had come to the
Delaware River! From the top of a very high hill we saw it--the river, I
mean; and, oh, but it looked worthy of its guardian mountains! Winding
and wonderful it was in beauty as we dropped into its deep, intimate
valley, down the tremendous slope. We were so excited we hardly knew the
road wa