JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 19 
music. Four of our five summer represent- 
atives of the genus Zurdus took turns, as 
it were, in the serenade. The veeries — 
Wilson’s thrushes— greeted me before I 
stepped off the piazza. As I neared the 
Profile House farm, the hermits were in tune 
on either hand. The moment the road en- 
tered the ancient forest, the olive - backs 
began to make themselves heard, and _ half- 
way up the mountain path the gray-cheeks 
took up the strain and carried it on to its 
heavenly conclusion. A noble processional! 
Even a lame man might have climbed to 
such music. If the wood thrush had been 
here, the chorus would have been complete, 
—a chorus not to be excelled, according 
to my untraveled belief, in any quarter of 
the world. 
To-day, however, my first thoughts were 
not of birds, but of the mountain. The 
weather was all that could be asked, — the 
temperature perfect, and the atmosphere so 
transparent as to be of itself a kind of lens; 
so that in the evening, when I rejoined my 
companions at the hotel, I found to my as- 
tonishment that I had been plainly visible 
while at the summit, the beholders having 
