102 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 
tain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? 
I am not careful to justify myself. I love a 
mountain-top, and go there because I love 
to be there. It is good, I think, to be lifted 
above the every-day level, and to enjoy the 
society — and the absence of society — which 
the heights afford. Looking over my notes 
of this excursion, I come upon the following 
sentence: “To sit on a stone beside a moun- 
tain road, with olive-backed thrushes piping 
on every side, the ear catching now and then 
the distant tinkle of a winter wren’s tune, 
or the nearer zee, zee, zee of black-poll war- 
blers, while white-throated sparrows call 
cheerily out of the spruce forest — this is to 
be in another world.” 
This sense of distance and strangeness is 
not to be obtained, in my case at all events, 
by a few hours’ stay in such a spot. I must 
pitch my tent there, for at least a night or 
two. I cannot even see the prospect at first, 
much less feel the spirit of the place. There 
must be time for the old life to drop off, as 
it were, while eye and ear grow wonted to 
novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did 
take note of trivial things, —the call of a 
bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was 
