A WEEK ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 33 



yourself the only man in the world ; gazing at the 

 prospect, listening to the mountain sUenee (there 

 is none like it), or eating alpine blueberries, as 

 lonely as any hermit's heart could \rish. All this 

 you may do, and then return to the most obliging 

 of hosts, the best of good dinners, and a comfort- 

 able bed. 



By the time you have been there two days, 

 moreover, you wiU have begun to enjoy, the hotel, 

 not only for its physical comforts, but as an in- 

 teresting miniature world. The manager and the 

 clerk, the waiters and the bellboys, the editors 

 and the printers, the night watchman and the 

 train conductor, wiU all have become your friends, 

 almost your blood relations, — such intimate 

 good feeling does a joint seclusion induce, — and 

 at any minute of the day in may come a group 

 of strangers of the most engagingly picturesque 

 sort; having no more the appearance of sales- 

 ladies or women of fashion, shopkeepers or 

 bankers' clerks, than of college students and 

 professors. They are men and women. They 

 have put ofE the fine clothes and the smug ap- 

 pearance which society exacts of its members ; 

 they look not the least in the world as if they 

 had just come out of a bandbox ; their negligee 

 costumes bear no resemblance to the dainty, im- 

 maculate rig of the tennis court or the golf links. 



