on of an important part of its
territory, and I must send somebody to Georgia before the end of this
month to look up witnesses and get ready for the defense. If you are
through your junketing by that time, it will be an admirable opportunity
for you to learn the practical details of the business . . . . Perhaps
it may quicken your ardor in the matter if I communicate to you another
fact. Penelope wrote me from Richfield, in a sort of panic, that she
feared you had compromised your whole future by a rash engagement with a
young lady from Cyrusville, Ohio--a Miss Benson-and she asked me to use
my influence with you. I replied to her that I thought that, in the
language of the street, you had compromised your future, if that were
true, for about a hundred cents on the dollar. I have had business
relations with Mr. Benson for twenty years. He is the principal owner in
the Lavalle Iron Mine, and he is one of the most sensible, sound, and
upright men of my acquaintance. He comes of a good old New England
stock, and if his daughter has the qualities of her father and I hear
that she has been exceedingly well educated besides she is not a bad
match even for a Knickerbocker.

"Hoping that you will be able to report at the office before the end of
the month,

"I am affectionately yours,
"SCHUYLER BREVOORT."

"Well, that's all right," said the artist, after a pause. "I suppose the
world might go on if you spend another night in this hotel. But if you
must go, I'll bring on the women and the baggage when navigation opens in
the morning."

XVI

WHITE MOUNTAINS, LENNOX

The White Mountains are as high as ever, as fine in sharp outline against
the sky, as savage, as tawny; no other mountains in the world of their
height so well keep, on acquaintance, the respect of mankind. There is a
quality of refinement in their granite robustness; their desolate, bare
heights and sky-scraping ridges are rosy in the dawn and violet at
sunset, and their profound green gulfs are still mysterious. Powerful as
man is, and pushing, he cannot wholly vulgarize them. He can reduce the
valleys and the show "freaks" of nature to his own moral level, but the
vast bulks and the summits remain for the most part haughty and pure.

Yet undeniably something of the romance of adventure in a visit to the
White Hills is wanting, now that the railways penetrate every valley, and
all the physical obstacles of the journey are removed. One can never
agai