We started in good faith, Tuesday, July 7, driving along the familiar way through Lunenburg and Townsend Harbor, crossing the invisible State line as we entered Brookline, and spending the night, as we have often done, at the little hotel in Milford, N. H., journeying next day to Hooksett, via Amherst, Bedford and Manchester. Nothing eventful occurred except the inauguration of our sketchbook, a thing of peculiar interest to us, as neither of us knew anything of sketching. The book itself is worthy of mention, as it is the only copy we have ever seen. It has attractive form and binding, and is called “Summer Gleanings.” There is a page for each day of the summer months, with a charming, and so often apt, quotation under each date. The pages are divided into three sections, one for “Jottings by the Way,” one for a “Pencil Sketch,—not for exact imitation, but what it suggests,” and a third for “Pressed Flowers.” As it was a gift, and of no use but for the purpose for which it was intended, we decided it must be taken along, although one said it would be “awfully in the way.”
We enjoyed camping at noon by the roadside so much last summer, when the hotels were scarce, that we planned to make that the rule of this journey, and not the exception. We thought the hour after luncheon, while Charlie was resting, would be just the time to try to sketch. Our first “camp” was under a large tree, just before we crossed into New Hampshire. We looked about for something to sketch, and a few attempts convinced us that, being ignorant of even the first rules of perspective, our subjects must be selected with reference to our ability, regardless of our taste. We went to work on a pair of bars—or a gate, rather—in the stone wall opposite. We were quite elated with our success, and next undertook a shed. After this feat, we gathered a few little white clovers, which we pressed in our writing tablet, made a few comments in the “jotting” column, and the “Summer Gleanings” began to mean something.
We cannot tell you all we enjoyed and experienced with that little book. It was like opening the room which had “a hundred doors, each opening into a room with another hundred,” especially at night, when our brains, fascinated and yet weary with the great effort spent on small accomplishment, and the finger nerves sensitive with working over unruly stems and petals, we only increased a thousandfold the pastime of the day by pressing whole fields of flowers, and attempting such sketching as was never thought of except in dreamland. A word or two about the quotations, then you may imagine the rest. What could be more apt for the first day of our journey than Shelley’s
“Away, away from men and towns
To the wild wood and the downs,”
or, as we came in sight of the “White Hills,” Whittier’s
“Once more, O mountains, unveil
Your brows and lay your cloudy mantles by.”
and
“O more than others blest is he