me from the weakness of my sex,
And made me new create in thee. Love thee!
I had not lived until I knew thee."

On arriving at the hotel, Florence retired to her room, which she found
vacant, and learned Ellen had joined a party on an excursion to Mount
Willard, one of the loftiest peaks of the Crawford Notch, to whose
summit there is a carriage road.

She drew forth her journal, and, sitting down beside the window,
commenced to write.

Nimbly the golden pen sped over the spotless page, leaving a train of
sprightly thoughts behind it, while the bright face glowed and sparkled
with the buoyant happiness of the soul within.

"I feel like one just dropped from the clouds," she wrote, "and I should
be inconsolable at my sudden descent from the august abode of eternal
sublimities to the grovelling haunts of care and discontent, but that a
sun-soaring spirit companioned and illumined my fall.

"I have stood above the clouds that swept the brows of lofty surrounding
mountains, and seen _that star of mine_ rise sweet and clear upon my
earnest vision, and felt my long-chilled heart grow warm and glad
beneath its beaming rays of light and love. I toiled up the miraculous
steeps of hoary-headed, granite-crowned Mount Washington, to realize a
double joy. The stern, gloomy grandeur was alone sufficient to awaken my
profoundest awe, my strongest admiration; but a warm heart-happiness
stole over me, which spread a mantling glory over all the thousand
dark-browed mountains that loomed in their awful majesty on every side.

"And ever, till my heart has ceased to beat, though I should roam in
foreign lands, along the castled Rhine, or beneath the sunny skies of
classic Italy, Mount Washington will be to me the glory of the earth!
For, standing on its granite piles, while sunrise pierced the gloomy
valleys far below, a love nestled warmly to my bosom, with which I would
not part for India's wealth of gems. How rich am I in the knowledge of
Edgar's love! My soul is strong and firm as the mountains where my joy
was born. Shall I ever tremble or waver again? Am I not mailed in armor
to meet unshocked the battling swords and lances of life's armied
legions of cares and sorrows? With Edgar's love to nerve my soul, what
is there that I cannot endure? Surely, I could survive all things save
separation from him; and is not this the one which will be demanded of
my strength?

"But I will not mar my happiness by dark