ith shells and other ornaments, why may not our little
Northern darling beautify her nest with such humbler materials as her
surroundings offer? On reflection, I am more and more convinced that the
birds knew what they were doing; probably the female the moment she
discovered the moss, called to her mate, "Oh, look, how lovely! Do, my
dear, let's line our nest with it!"

This artistic structure was found on the anniversary of the battle of
Bunker Hill, a day which I had been celebrating, as best I could, by
climbing the highest hill in New England. Plunging into the woods within
fifty yards of the Crawford House, I had gone up and up, and on and on,
through a magnificent forest, and then over more magnificent rocky
heights, until I stood at last on the platform of the hotel at the
summit. True, the path, which I had never traveled before, was wet and
slippery, with stretches of ice and snow here and there; but the
shifting view was so grand, the atmosphere so bracing, and the solitude
so impressive that I enjoyed every step, till it came to clambering up
the Mount Washington cone over the bowlders. At this point, to speak
frankly, I began to hope that the ninth mile would prove to be a short
one. The guide-books are agreed in warning the visitor against making
this ascent without a companion, and no doubt they are right in so
doing. A crippling accident would almost inevitably be fatal, while for
several miles the trail is so indistinct that it would be difficult, if
not impossible, to follow it in a fog. And yet, if one is willing to
take the risk (and is not so unfortunate as never to have learned how to
keep himself company), he will find a very considerable compensation in
the peculiar pleasure to be experienced in being absolutely alone above
the world. For myself, I was shut up to going in this way or not going
at all; and a Bostonian must do something patriotic on the Seventeenth
of June. But for all that, if the storm which chased me down the
mountains in the afternoon, clouding first Mount Washington and then
Mount Pleasant behind me, and shutting me in-doors all the next day, had
started an hour sooner, or if I had been detained an hour later, it is
not impossible that I might now be writing in a different strain.

My reception at the top was none of the heartiest. The hotel was tightly
closed, while a large snow-bank stood guard before the door. However, I
invited myself into the Signal Service Station, and m