18 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



Mm a red-eyed vireo. One of the belated, 

 he must be, according to my almanac. He 

 peers down at me with inquisitive, sidelong 

 glances. A man ! — in such a j)lace ! — 

 and sitting still ! I like to believe that he, 

 as well as I, feels a pleasurable surprise at 

 the unlooked-for encounter. We call him 

 the preacher, but he is not sermonizing to- 

 day, perhaps because the falling leaves have 

 taken the words out of his mouth. 



It is one of the best things about a place 

 like this that it gives a man a most unusual 

 feeling of remoteness and isolation. To be 

 here is not the same as to be in some equally 

 wild and silent spot nearer to human habita- 

 tions. The sense of the climb we have 

 made, of the wilderness we have traversed, 

 still folds us about. The fever and the fret, 

 so constant with us as to be mostly unreal- 

 ized or taken for the normal state of man, 

 are for the moment gone, and peace settles 

 upon the heart. For myself, at least, there 

 is an unspeakable sweetness in such an hour. 

 I could stay here, forever, I think, till I be- 

 came a tree. That feeling I have often had, 

 — a state of ravishment, a kind of absorp- 



