238 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



a virtue that runs often to pernicious 

 excess and seemingly would never have 

 given over their efforts, only that a gentle- 

 man's voice from the observatory finally 

 called out, in a tone of long-suffering polite- 

 ness, "Won't you please let up on that 

 horn, just for a little while ? " The horn- 

 blowers, not to be outdone in civility, an- 

 swered at once with a good-natured affirma- 

 tive, and a heavenly silence, a silence that 

 might be felt, descended upon our ears. 

 Neither blower nor pleader will ever know 

 how heartily he was thanked by a man who 

 lay upon the rocks a little distance below 

 the summit, looking down into the Franconia 

 Valley. 



The scene is of exquisite beauty ; beauty, 

 moreover, of a kind that I especially love; 

 but for the first half-hour I looked without 

 seeing. It is always so with me in such 

 places, I cannot tell why. Formerly I laid 

 my disability to the fact that the eye had 

 first to satisfy its natural curiosity concern- 

 ing the details of a strange landscape ; its 

 instinctive desire to orient itself by attention 

 to topographical particulars ; and no doubt 



