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nd. After nightfall we went out and walked up and down the grass-grown streets. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle. The remoteness and surrounding wildness rendered the scene doubly impressive. And the next day and the next the place was an object of wonder. There were about thirty buildings in all, most of them small frame houses with a door and two windows opening into a small yard in front and a garden in the rear, such as are usually occupied by the laborers in a country manufacturing district. There was one large two-story boarding-house, a schoolhouse with cupola and a bell in it, and numerous sheds and forges, and a saw-mill. In front of the saw-mill, and ready to be rolled to their place on the carriage, lay a large pile of pine logs, so decayed that one could run his walking-stick through them. Near by, a building filled with charcoal was bursting open and the coal going to waste on the ground. The smelting works were also much crumbled by time. The schoolhouse was still used. Every day one of the daughters assembles her smaller brothers and sisters there and school keeps. The district library contained nearly one hundred readable books which were well thumbed. The absence of society had made the family all good readers. We brought them an illustrated newspaper, which was awaiting them in the post-office at the Lower Works. It was read and reread with great eagerness by every member of the household. The iron ore cropped out on every hand. There was apparently mountains of it; one could see it in the stones along the road. But the difficulties met with in separating the iron from its alloys, together with the expense of transportation and the failure of certain railroad schemes, caused the works to be abandoned. No doubt the time is not distant when these obstacles will be overcome and this region reopened. At present it is an admirable place to go to. There is fishing and hunting and boating and mountain-climbing within easy reach, and a good roof over your head at night, which is no small matter. One is often disqualified for enjoying the woods after he gets there by the loss of sleep and of proper food taken at seasonable times. This point attended to, one is in the humor for any enterprise. About half a mile northeast of the village is Lake Henderson, a very irregular and picturesque sheet of water surrounded by dark evergreen forests, and abutted by two or three bold promontories with m
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