owlder once hung, and spends his
time in hunting for it in the acres of wreck and debris. And in order to
satisfy reasonable human curiosity, the proprietors of the flume have
been obliged to select a bowlder and label it as the one that was
formerly the shrine of pilgrimage.

In his college days King had more than once tramped all over this region,
knapsack on back, lodging at chance farmhouses and second-class hotels,
living on viands that would kill any but a robust climber, and enjoying
the life with a keen zest only felt by those who are abroad at all hours,
and enabled to surprise Nature in all her varied moods. It is the chance
encounters that are most satisfactory; Nature is apt to be whimsical to
him who approaches her of set purpose at fixed hours. He remembered also
the jolting stage-coaches, the scramble for places, the exhilaration of
the drive, the excitement of the arrival at the hotels, the sociability
engendered by this juxtaposition and jostle of travel. It was therefore
with a sense of personal injury that, when he reached Bethlehem junction,
he found a railway to the Profile House, and another to Bethlehem. In
the interval of waiting for his train he visited Bethlehem Street, with
its mile of caravansaries, big boarding-houses, shops, and city veneer,
and although he was delighted, as an American, with the "improvements"
and with the air of refinement, he felt that if he wanted retirement and
rural life, he might as well be with the hordes in the depths of the
Adirondack wilderness. But in his impatience to reach his destination he
was not sorry to avail himself of the railway to the Profile House. And
he admired the ingenuity which had carried this road through nine miles
of shabby firs and balsams, in a way absolutely devoid of interest, in
order to heighten the effect of the surprise at the end in the sudden
arrival at the Franconia Notch. From whichever way this vast white hotel
establishment is approached, it is always a surprise. Midway between
Echo Lake and Profile Lake, standing in the very jaws of the Notch,
overhung on the one side by Cannon Mountain and on the other by a bold
spur of Lafayette, it makes a contrast between the elegance and order of
civilization and the untouched ruggedness and sublimity of nature
scarcely anywhere else to be seen.

The hotel was still full, and when King entered the great lobby and
office in the evening a very animated scene met his eye. A big fire of
logs