X. 



AMONG THE FRANCONIA MOUNTAINS. 



THE dawn was not yet visible over Eagle Cliff when I 

 awoke, and, opening my window, stepped out on the bal- 

 cony. The silence which held possession of the valley 

 was profound. There was no voice of any kind of life, 

 nor was there a breath of wind stirring tree or leaf. 

 More than six hundred persons were sleeping in the 

 Profile House and its surrounding buildings, but for 

 aught that was audible the Franconia notch might have 

 been as desolate as it was two hundred years ago. 



The early morning is to me the most charming portion 

 of a mountain day. I blame no one for sleeping late. 

 The luxury of that half- sleeping half- waking hour, the 

 only time when one knows he is asleep, and appreciates 

 it, is beyond all dispute. No one has clung to it more 

 tenaciously than I. In town, where waking is waking to 

 the rough sounds of the city, to morning smoke and rat- 

 tling milk-wagons and shrieking hucksters, and the thou- 

 sand indications that the feeding of the beasts is the first 

 thing in a New York morning before work commences, 

 I, too, have kept my head to the pillow with exceeding 

 comfort in the consciousness that I was asleep, and great 

 satisfaction in the thousand times reiterated assurance 

 that I need not wake yet. 



But in travel and in the mountains and forests the 



