AT ORMOND BY THE SEA. 



" They were pleasant spring days in which the winter of man's dis- 

 content was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid 

 began to stretch itself." Thoreau. 



We reach Ormond at one o'clock p. m., and I am 

 met at the station, a third of a mile from the town, 

 by Mr. Harrison Bristol, a gentleman who is expect- 

 ing me. A tram-car, the motive power of which is 

 one blind horse, is waiting for passengers. The 

 driver to-day is an elegantly dressed lady, probably 

 one of the guests of the Ormond Hotel, the great inn 

 a mile distant, between which and the railway station 

 the single tram-car runs. She keeps the horse a-jog- 

 ging by clucking and striking him with the lines, 

 while the conductor collects the fares. 



Ormond is a pleasant town of 600 population, a 

 large proportion of the dwellings being the winter 

 cottages Df northern residents. Its main, and prac- 

 tically its only, street runs north and south and is 

 nearly a mile in length. Along the western side of 

 this the houses are scattered, facing the Halifax 

 River, a tide-water stream, or rather elongated bay, 

 the mouth of which, Mosquito Inlet, opens into the 

 Atlantic seventeen miles below. Opposite the town 



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