SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAINS 65 
ing and eating the birds and despoiling their nests of 
eggs and young; but whoever has heard the many 
sweet cadences, the crooning, caressing tones of these 
flufify, nocturnal revelers, will be convinced that 
the chief occupation of the owl at night is the pursuit 
of happiness. Sometimes far away, deep-toned, and 
mysterious comes the hoo — 000 — 000, hoo — 00 of the 
great horned owl, and you, listening, can easily be- 
lieve that he at least is up to mischief. You do not 
often see the owls, but sometimes walking in the 
woods at dusk a shape will float past noiseless as a 
disembodied spirit. 
In the higher mountains there are no mosquitoes, 
and there used to be none at Traumfest in those 
good old days before the stranger had begun to "im- 
prove" the place. The summers of Traumfest are 
sweet beyond words to express and the thermometer 
goes no higher here than in the North, — not so high 
very often, — and the nights are cool ; but the hot 
season lasts longer, so that those accustomed to five 
or six weeks of midsummer heat sometimes grumble 
when they get four months of it. But no one who 
has not spent a summer here can hope to know what 
these woods are capable of in the way of sweet smells. 
All the mountaineer does these days is to "work 
the corn" with a cultivator, if he happens to have 
one with the necessary adjunct of a mule; or other- 
wise with a slow hoe. Sometimes he does not work 
it, and complains of the result. The corn crop looks 
like a joke to the newcomer accustomed to corn in 
other regions. "What are you doing? " was asked of 
