e-way places
where you are in the habit of wasting your summers. Why can you not be
content with the ordinary highways, where people travel comfortably in
good boats and rail cars? Why must you leave tolerably convenient
hotels, regular meals, and agreeable, proper people, to bury yourself in
some mountain fastness, where the inns are poor, the food plain, and the
people--well! such as are totally unfit associates for two well-bred
young women?'

'O auntie! auntie! we thought you called yourself a democrat!' said
Elsie.

'Politically, my dear, but not socially,' was the reply.

'And a Christian!' added Lucy D----.

'I see,' continued Mrs. Grundy, 'that, by raising other issues, you hope
to escape an explanation of the mystery to which I have referred.'

'A mystery indeed!' replied Lucy D----. 'The mystery of nature, of
creation, of the communion of the creature with the infinitely bountiful
Creator. Have you never wandered away from the beaten track, from
tiresome dinners, with mercenary waiters and elaborate courses, from
yawning, _blase_ men, and over-dressed, artificial, weakly women, and,
resting upon some quiet hillside, suffered the glories of external
nature to fill your soul as you drained the cup of beauty, until
sunrises and sunsets, storm clouds and morning mists, broad bands of
light and darksome shadows, steep mountains and curving valleys,
hurrying brooks and tidal oceans, dusky pine forests and tremulous
bluebells, dreamily floated before the vision, soothing care and the
petty wounds inflicted by the human denizens of this nether world? I
love my kind, I share their faults and follies, I pity their sorrows,
and would do my utmost to succor or to soothe; but I do not understand
them as I do the woods: their faces I readily forget, but never the
forms of mountain crag, of noble tree, or of first spring wild flower.
Among men I may be misunderstood, disliked perhaps, or, more generally,
simply ignored and overlooked; but among the hills I fear no harsh, no
indifferent word: each treasure of beauty breathes to me of One who
knows my every heart-beat, One whom I can love without fear of wound or
disenchantment. The mountain clefts have no unkind words, no
fault-finding, no ridicule, no rash judgments for the sons of men. They
offer clear springs, fresh fruits, and festal flowers, peace and rest
and pure joy!'

'Really, Lucy,' said Aunt Sarah, 'I am not sure your rhapsody has made
the mystery any plain