THE first days of May, 1877, found me again at the Glen House, prepared to put in immediate execution the long-deferred purpose of ascending Mount Washington in the balmy days of spring. Before separating for the night, my young Jehu, who drove me from Gorham in an hour, said, with a grin,
“So you are going where they cut their butter with a chisel, and their meat with a hand-saw?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you will learn to-morrow.”
“Till to-morrow, then.”
“Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
At six in the morning, while the stars were yet twinkling, I stood in the road in front of the Glen House. Everything announced a beautiful day. The rising sun crimsoned, first, the dun wall of Tuckerman’s Ravine, then the high summits, and then flowed down their brawny flanks—his first salutation being to the monarch. In ten minutes I was alone in the forest with the squirrels, the partridges, the woodpeckers, and my own thoughts.
As bears are not unfrequently seen at this season of the year, I kept my eyes about me. One of the old drivers related to me that one morning, while going up this road with a heavy load of passengers, his horses suddenly stopped, showing most unmistakable signs of terror. The place was a dangerous one, where the road had been wholly excavated from the steep side of the mountain, so, keeping one eye upon his fractious team, he threw quick glances right and left with the other; while the passengers, alarmed by the sudden stop, the driver’s shouts to his animals, and the still more alarming backward movement of the coach, thrust their heads out of the windows, and with white faces demanded what was the matter.
“By thunder!” ejaculated Jehu, “there was my leaders all in a lather, an’ backin’ almost atop of the fill-horses, and them passengers a-shoutin’ like lunatics let out on a picnic. ‘Look! darn it all,’ sez I, a-pintin’ with my whip. My hosses was all in a heap, I tell ye, rarin’ and charging, when a little Harvard student, with his head sand-papered, sung out, ‘All right, Cap, I’ve chucked your hind wheels;’ and then he made for the leaders’ heads. Them college chaps ain’t such darned fools arter all, they ain’t.”