LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN. 



Lookout Mountain was at first a dis- 

 appointment. I went home discouraged. 

 The place was spoiled, I thought. About 

 the fine inn were cheap cottages, — as if 

 one had come to a second-class summer 

 resort ; while the lower slopes of the moun- 

 tain, directly under Lookout Point on the 

 side toward the city, were given up to a 

 squalid negro settlement, and, of all things, a 

 patent-medicine factory, — a shameful dese- 

 cration, it seemed to me. I was half ready 

 to say I would go there no more. The pros- 

 pect was beautiful, — so much there was no 

 denying ; but the air was thick with smoke, 

 and, what counted for ten times more, the 

 eye itself was overclouded. A few northern 

 warblers were chirping in the evergreens 

 along the edge of the summit, between the 

 inn and the Point, — black-polls and bay- 

 breasts, with black-throated greens and Car- 

 olina wrens ; and near them I saw with 

 pleasure my first Tennessee phoebes. In the 



