d
welcomes you with lemonade and roses (perhaps he wouldn't YOU!),--a
hotel terrible to evil-doers, but a praise to them that do well,
inasmuch as it is conducted on the millennial principle of quietly
frightening away disagreeable people with high rates, and fascinating
amiable people with reasonable ones, so that, of course, you have the
wheat without the chaff,--a hotel where people go to rest and enjoy,
and wear morning-dresses all day, and are fine only when they
choose--indeed, you can do that anywhere, if you only think so. The
idea that you must lug all your best clothes through the wilderness is
absurd. A good travelling-dress, admissible of bisection, a muslin
spencer for warm evenings, and a velvet bodice when you design to be
gorgeous, will take you through with all the honors of war. Besides,
there are always sure to be plenty of people in every drawing-room who
will be sumptuously attired, and you can feast your eyes luxuriously on
them, and gratefully feel that the work is so well done as to need no
co-operation of yours, and that you can be comfortable with an easy
conscience. Where was I? O, on the top, of Paradise Hill, I believe,
surveying Paradise, a little indistinct and quavering in the sheen of a
summer noon, but clear enough to reveal its Pison, its Gilton, its
Hiddekel, and Euphrates, compassing the whole land of Havilah; or
perhaps I was on Sparrowhawk, beholding Paradise from another point,
dotted with homes and church-spires, rich and fertile, fair still, with
compassing river and tranquil lake; or, more probable than either, I
was driving along the highland that skirts the golden meadows through
which the river purls, ruddy in the setting sun, and rejoicing in the
beauty amid which he lives and moves and has his being. Lovely Bethel,
fairest ornament of the sturdy mountain-land, tender and smiling as if
no storm had ever swept, no sin ever marred,--in Arcadia that no one
would ever leave but for the magic of the drive back to Gorham through
piny woods, under frowning mountains, circled with all the glories of
sky and river,--a drive so enticing, that, when you reach Gorham,
straight back again you will go to Bethel, and so forever oscillate,
unless some stronger magnet interpose.

A rainy day among the mountains is generally considered rather dismal,
but I find that I like it. Apart from the fact that you wish, or ought
to wish, to see Nature in all her aspects, it is a very benefice