the Bredes
to walk with us to "our view." The Hoogencamp-Biggle-Tabb-Halkit
contingent never stirred off Jacobus's veranda; but we both felt that
the Bredes would not profane that sacred scene. We strolled slowly
across the fields, passed through the little belt of woods and, as I
heard Mrs. Brede's little cry of startled rapture, I motioned to Brede
to look up.

"By Jove!" he cried, "heavenly!"

We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of
billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue lay a
dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages lay
before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and
lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great
silent sea of sunlit green. For silent it was to us, standing in the
silence of a high place--silent with a Sunday stillness that made us
listen, without taking thought, for the sound of bells coming up from
the spires that rose above the tree-tops--the tree-tops that lay as
far beneath us as the light clouds were above us that dropped great
shadows upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the broad sweep
of land at the mountain's foot.

"And so that is _your_ view?" asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; "you
are very generous to make it ours, too."

Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk, in a gentle
voice, as if he felt the influence of the place. He had paddled a
canoe, in his earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek
in that vast stretch of landscape. He found his landmarks, and pointed
out to us where the Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to
us, hidden behind great ridges that in our sight were but combings of
the green waves upon which we looked down. And yet, on the further
side of those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages--a little
world of country life, lying unseen under our eyes.

"A good deal like looking at humanity," he said; "there is such a
thing as getting so far above our fellow men that we see only one side
of them."

Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip
of the Tabb and the Hoogencamp--than the Major's dissertations upon
his everlasting circulars! My wife and I exchanged glances.

"Now, when I went up the Matterhorn" Mr. Brede began.

"Why, dear," interrupted his wife, "I didn't know you ever went up the
Matterhorn."

"It--it was five years ago," said Mr. Brede, hurriedly. "I--I d