224 AT TEE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER . 
rock-choked bed. I escaped from the hustling 
crowd in the hot hall, and watched the eager 
current till my eyes and ears were cleared of 
smoke and empty laughter, and a taste of some¬ 
thing sweeter than politics was left on my 
tongue. The river, with its bright water, was 
following its course towards 'the Bearcamp and 
the sea, because for time out of mind it had 
flowed that way and knew no other. Most of 
the men inside the hall were acting their parts 
with much the same intelligence, and marking 
wherever they saw the letter R, or the letter D, 
not because they knew what those two great 
letters were struggling for this day in all the 
length and breadth of the Union, but because 
for years they had worshiped the one and hated 
the other with the fetich-maker’s fervor. 
A bright-faced, blue-eyed committee-man, 
just old enough to cast his first vote for his 
party’s hero, came to call me to the dinner set 
for those who had come from a distance to vote. 
After dinner I took my share of the bone-crush¬ 
ing process inside the hall, marked my long 
ballot, and started at once for the city. First 
my friend’s wagon rolled along the pleasant 
Bearcamp valley to the pine plains. Turning a 
little aside, we drove past White Pond, a shal¬ 
low, mirror-like lake in the heart of the plain, 
framed in snowy sand and gaunt pines. The 
