120 THE ST. UKCilS AM) SAKANAi S. 



The mountain region must always bear oil' the heroic hon- 

 ors, but the Upper Sarantic, in my opinion, contends with 

 the Raquettc for the milder supremacy of beauty and 

 grandeur combined. 



At dinner, I sat near a husband and wife, the husband, 

 an invalid who came too late to the health giving forot. 

 lie was as brown as sun and wind could make one, the 

 result of many weeks of out door life, but so thin and 



weak that the complexion of health was a wretched satire 

 and mockery. His wife was as tender and solicitous as if 

 he had been her infant child: but he answered her inquir 

 ies in a hollow voice that was startling and painful to hear. 

 lie leaned his head on his hand and his elbow on the table 

 and pushed adde his |>lale of food, unable to eat, with a 

 look of despair on his face, as if, at last, he had given up 

 his brave, long light for life and had resolved to struggle 



no longer. He was a stranger, I saw him only a few min- 

 utes, but I have imagined a hundred times the sorrowful 

 details of his sununer's endeavor to arrest the progress of 

 insidious disease, and wondered, and wondered again, if 

 he lived to reach his home, and if he died with his family 

 at his bed-side. This man's hollow, sun-browned face and 

 despairing look, and his wife's anxious brow were the sad 

 dest sight I ever happened upon in the wilderness. 



The cloud of the Saranac Hotel was obscuring the sun 

 shine of the scene at St. (termain's Carry, and I finished 

 my dinner as speedily as my appetite and good manners 

 would permit, and .joined more joyous society on the lawn 

 in front of the house. That sorrow was not my burden to 

 bear. 



