Where Town and Country Meet 



my far-ranging vision. Montreal ninety 

 miles away clearly visible from Mansfield, 

 yes, even from Cobble Hill! The grand, 

 ghostlike company of the Presidential 

 Range in New Hampshire marching before 

 me as I stood on the great cliff of Gamers 

 Hump what revelations for a boy who had 

 never been forty miles away from home! 

 Ah! those September mountain tramps, 

 when the wine of the autumn air and the 

 magnetism of frost sang together in my 

 veins, and the heart of youth was so light 

 that it seemed to buoy up the body like 

 wings! That was the kind of Emersonian 

 freedom and footlooseness that does indeed 

 make the pomp of emperors seem ridiculous. 

 One is not much disposed to observe 

 minutely, I think, on a September tramp. 

 The last of the birds and the last of the 

 flowers may challenge a somewhat languid 

 interest, but for my own part I like to take 

 things in the mass, in the aggregate, when 

 nature's long season of emphasized individ 

 ualism is on the wane. For months we na 

 ture-lovers have been burdening our brains 

 and note-books with observations of con 

 crete life in a thousand different forms. In- 

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