THE SEARCH AND FINDING 



in regard to my whereabouts. I remember 

 turning slightly, perhaps to the right, and 

 threading the ways of a neat little manufac- 

 turing village, — catching views of waterfalls, 

 of tall chimneys, of open pasture grounds ; and 

 remember bridges, and other bridges, and how 

 the village straggled on with its neat white 

 palings, and whiter houses, with honeysuckles 

 at the doors; and how we skirted a pond, 

 where the pads of lilies lay all idly afloat; and 

 how a great hulk of rock loomed up suddenly 

 near a thousand feet, with dwarfed cedars and 

 oaks tufting its crevices — tufting its top, and 

 how we drove almost beneath it, so that I 

 seemed to be in Meyringen again, and to hear 

 the dash of the foaming Reichenbach; and 

 how we ascended again, drifting through an- 

 other limb of the village, where the little 

 churches stood ; and how we sped on past neat 

 white houses, — rising gently, — skirted by 

 hedgerows of tangled cedars, and presently 

 stopped before a grayish-white farmhouse, 

 where the air was all aflow with the perfume 

 of great purple spikes of lilacs. And thence, 

 though we had risen so little I had scarce no- 

 ticed a hill, we saw all the spires of the city 

 we had left, two miles away as a bird flies, 

 and they seemed to stand cushioned on a broad 



41 



