With zealots like this about you, as I have intimated, you may safely speak out. If you have seen an unexpected, long-expected warbler, or a chimney-top duck, or a skyward soaring lark, you may talk of it without fear, with no restraint upon your feelings or your phrases. Here things are seen as they are; truth is cleared of false lights, and Wisdom is justified of her children. Happy Franconia!
“Has she not shown us all?
From the clear space of ether, to the small
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning
Of Jove’s large eyebrow, to the tender greening
Of April meadows?”
Happy Franconia! “Nested and quiet in a valley mild!” I think of her June strawberries and her perennial enthusiasms, and I wish I were there now.
A VISIT TO MOUNT AGASSIZ
Mount Agassiz is rather a hill than a mountain; there is no glory to be won in climbing it, unless, perhaps, by very small children and elderly ladies; but if a man is in search of a soul-filling prospect he may climb higher and see less. The road to it, furthermore (I speak as a Franconian), is one of those that pay the walker as he goes along. Every rod of the five miles is worth traveling for its own sake, especially on a bright and comfortable August morning such as the Fates had this time sent me. It was eight o’clock when I set out, and with a sandwich in my pocket I meant to be in no haste. If invitations to linger by the way were as many and as pressing as I hoped for, a mile and a quarter to the hour would be excellent speed.
Red crossbills and pine siskins were calling in the larch trees near the house as I left the piazza. The siskins have never been a frequent sight with me in the summer season, and finding almost at once a flock in the grass by the roadside, feeding upon seeds, as well as I could make out, and delightfully fearless, I stopped for a few minutes to look them over. Some of the number showed much more yellow than others, but none of them could have been dressed more strictly in the fashion if their costumes had come straight from Paris. Every bird was in stripes.