o live and labor
through sunshine and shade, and can only catch these rosy minutes as
they fly.

Some of these halcyon moments we enjoyed on that fortunate day we
arrived at the Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. The earth was covered with its
autumn carpet of dry dark leaves,--brown and glossy on one side, deep
violet on the other,--and crinkling and crushing beneath our tread, they
kept up a staccato treble to the dulcet sighing of the wind through the
yellow leaves still lingering on the trees. A delicious concert of sweet
sounds, and one that Mozart and Mendelssohn must have studied well and
carefully. The atmosphere was bright and clear as under a summer sun,
but without the heat; the air as fine and bracing as winter, but without
the cold. We lost sight entirely of the two great tormentors, heat and
cold, and for the few days of our stay forgot their very existence.

I have heard of persons feeling, under the effect of laughter, as light
and buoyant as if floating in ambient air. The atmosphere during their
"Indian summer" must, doubtless, be strongly impregnated with oxygen,
for we experienced a similar sensation; which was probably deepened by
the fact of our having come from Louisville, where those hotel stairs
had seemed a perfect toil to us.

The country around the caves, for eight or ten miles, was a series of
deep ravines, studded with projecting cliffs and rocks, and covered with
oak--principally the English oak--and another gigantic species, with
leaves from a quarter to half a yard long, but of the same form as the
ordinary oak-leaf. Up and down the ravines we scrambled and roamed, as
happy as goats or wild chamois. These ravines, or glens, have no doubt
been the beds of some ancient river, now, perhaps, flowing through the
bowels of the earth; for this part of the country is intersected by
underground rivers, a stream often suddenly appearing, which, after
flowing on for a few miles, plunges rapidly into the earth and is lost
to sight.

An anecdote is told of two millers who had their mills on two different
rivers, thirty miles apart. There had been a long drought, and neither
mill had been working; but one day miller No. 1 heard his wheel going
round at a tremendous pace, and going to examine it perceived a quantity
of water, although there had not been a drop of rain for some time. He
went over to communicate his good luck to his neighbor.

"Oh!" exclaimed miller No. 2, "you're gettin' my water unbeknownst,