he voice be gentle, the birds will ask no more,
except, perhaps, a crumb or two from the slender stock of woodsman's
fare. The deer and the trout will not question our philosophy, knowing
instinctively, as we do, that there is a great God who made us all, and
who ever encompasseth us with a love surpassing every created
conception. They will only ask of our good will, and that our absolute
need be the limit of our tax upon their lives. With the sky for roof,
and the beech and the pine for friends and teachers, the body has time
to strengthen, and the conscience and inner self to grow steadily
upright, that they may overtop trifles, rise to the height of heavenly
inspirations, and hence win power to withstand the surging floods of
bewildering human passion. When men meet such souls, they are amazed at
their calmness and simplicity, and dimly guess that the All-Powerful,
through His created universe, has been whispering to them secrets of
strength, perseverance, patience, and charity.

But this subject is boundless as its origin, and we must now to the
particulars of a personal experience, which, if limited, may yet be of
service to others desirous of journeying in the same region.

Having made a thorough acquaintance with the environs of Elizabethtown,
Elsie and I could no longer resist the blandishment of the blue
mountains ever beckoning us westward through the rocky portal of the
Keene Pass. July 13th, at six A.M., we started in the weekly stage for
Saranac, thirty-six miles distant. The morning was bright; a few low
clouds hung about the tops of the higher hills, and the wind blew from
the east, a direction which here, contrary to our experience near the
seaboard, by no means implies rain. So great is the distance of the
Adirondac plateau from the sea, so numerous its ranges, and so great the
elevation of the ridges lying between it and the ocean, that we found
our ordinary weather calculations all come to nought, east winds blowing
for days without a drop of rain, and western breezes bringing clouds
and moisture.

The road to Keene winds along a branch of the Boquet River, on which are
one or two quite pretty falls, with consequent mills; it ascends
continually until it reaches the foot of the steep rocks forming the
Keene Pass. The views back over the Boquet Valley and toward the Green
Mountains of Vermont are very lovely, and those obtained in descending
the western slope of this, the Boquet range, are magnifice