arah, with a significant shrug of her prettily
drooping shoulders.

'Sentimentalizing!' cried Lucy; 'nothing can be more healthfully real,
more conducive to strength and will to work, when the last red leaf has
fallen, and the gray November clouds remind one that Paradise is not yet
gained, and that a world of toil and strife and passion has a claim upon
each mortal's earnest labor. Also, the comic side of life is by no means
wanting among the hills, and many an innocent laugh is to be enjoyed
with, not at, one's fellow creatures. Humor I love dearly; satire is
simply hateful--filled with pain. I can always see the victim (if he
only knew!) writhing and blenching beneath the bitter glances and
blasting words of fiendish tormentors.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Elsie, 'many a merry evening have we spent laughing
over the day's adventures. The singular coincidences and strange
incongruities of American life are nowhere more strikingly exhibited
than among the hills and lakes bordering the great thoroughfares of
travel. Do you remember, Lucy, the transit of our friends, the foreign
professor and the artist, from the Catskill Mountain House to the head
of the Kauterskill Falls?'

'Can I ever forget it?'

'What transit was that, Lucy?' asked Mrs. Grundy.

'You know, Aunt Sarah, that midway up the Clove, nestled against the
side of the South Mountain, is Brockett's, and two miles up the ravine,
at the head of the Kauterskill Falls, stands the Laurel House, where we
passed a portion of last summer. Two miles farther east is the steep
brink of the Pine Orchard, crowned by the White colonnade of the
Mountain House. Early one morning, a much-esteemed friend, one of our
best artists, left Brockett's, and, climbing the ravine, passed our
house on his way to the North Mountain, whence a sketch was desired. We
had had nearly four weeks of continued rain, the brooks were full, the
falls magnificent, the roads in some parts under water, and every
pathway a running stream. We were daily expecting the arrival from
abroad of a gentleman whom I had never seen, but who was well known to,
and highly regarded by, sundry members of our family. He had written to
announce his coming, but we had failed to receive his letter, and,
consequently, when he, on the afternoon of the day already mentioned,
arrived at the Mountain House, he found no one waiting to receive him,
and no carriage to convey him to his final destination. No vehicle was
to be obt