, rocky crest. Whether they have any less
sensuous motive for loving to wander over such heights, who will presume
to determine? It may very well be that their almost ethereal
structure--such spread of wing with such lightness of body--is only the
outward sign of gracious thoughts and feelings, of a sensitiveness to
beauty far surpassing anything of which we ourselves are capable. What a
contrast between them and the grub gnawing ceaselessly under the
spruce-tree bark! Can the highest angel be as far above the lowest man?
And yet (how mysteriously suggestive would the fact be, if only it were
new to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom to
blossom in the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawling
thing, close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep and
been changed,--a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes to
read it.

I have spoken hitherto as if I were the only sojourner at the summit,
but there was another man, though I seldom saw him; a kind of hermit,
living in a little shanty under the lee of the Nose. Almost as a matter
of course he was reputed to be of good family and to read Greek, and the
fact that he now and then received a bank draft evidently gave him a
respectable standing in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something--something
of a very romantic nature, we may be sure--had driven him away from the
companionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to be
within reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had some
half-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; it
would ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because of
wild animals--bears and what not--he made his bed on the roof of his
hermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment of a life in the woods
all by one's self, but such a mode of existence did not gain in
attractiveness as I saw it here in the concrete example. On the whole I
was well satisfied to sleep in the hotel and eat at the hotel table.
Liberty is good, but I thought it might be undesirable to be a slave to
my own freedom.

Two or three times a wagon-load of tourists appeared at the hotel. They
strolled about the summit, admired the prospect, picked a bunch of
sandwort, perhaps, but especially they went to see the snow. They had
been at much trouble to stand upon the highest land in Vermont, and now
that they were here, they wished to do or see something unique,
something t