'Lovely vistas over the rolling lands beneath, and up to the mountains we were leaving behind, charmed away fatigue, and made the way like fairyland. Near the first cottage we again sat down to rest and consider our route. We hoped to find some near wood road leading over the wide base of the North Mountain into the Mountain House road; but never a wood road was to be seen. On and on we walked, descending lower and lower into the valley, and coming nearer and nearer to Kiskatom Round Top. At a turn in the way we asked a party of carpenters working on a house, if this was the right route to the Mountain House tollgate. Some laughed, all stared, and one answered, 'Yes.' On and on we plodded along a dusty highway, till we reached a house by a brook, with ducks and geese, a garden filled with autumn flowers, and a pleasant old lady sitting near the door. She also opened her eyes at our question, and said the distance to the tollgate was eight miles. Eight miles to the gate, three thence up the steep mountain, and then again two to the Laurel House! This, added to the many miles we had already walked, and the lateness of the hour, was indeed alarming. She added, we might obtain fuller information at a red farmhouse to be found some distance on. Again we walked and walked, passing through a wild region, Kiskatom Round Top continually most provokingly near, the road evidently leading due east, and sinking lower and lower toward the river. At the end of two or three miles we reached the red farmhouse, and were glad to rest in a neat sitting room, with a cheerful woman and two bright, handsome children. The harvest work being nearly done, the husband was absent on a day's hunt, but the aged father was soon called in to give us the desired information. The distance to the tollgate was only two miles, and while the boy made ready the team to take us over, the honest, intelligent farmer gave us a few sketches from his life history. His daughter wished him to don his better coat, but he replied that he had never been able to think that clothes could make or unmake a gentleman. He also observed that early adversity had been the greatest boon he had ever received, as, had he never failed in his city trading projects, he never would have come to the country, or have enjoyed his present health and happiness. He was a good patriot, and eagerly asked the latest news of the war. He had also pleasant reminiscences to relate of a Carolina Senator, who, with his family, had one summer beneath his roof sought health and strength under the shadow of the Catskills.
'A lively lad and fleet team soon placed us at the gate, which the stage from the boat was just passing. The little rest and drive had greatly invigorated us, and we bravely pushed on to the summit, outstripping the heavy coach, and reaching the top of the mountain just as the red rays of the setting sun were flushing the hills with crimson. The hour was too late to risk the dark path through the wood, and we continued upon the main highway, making but one deviation down a stony road, and over Spruce Creek, until we reached the Laurel House, where the twilight was still lingering, and where we found our friends a little anxious.'
'I do not wonder,' said Aunt Sarah. 'Such vagaries are enough to keep a whole household in a chronic state of anxiety. And I really cannot see what you had gained!'
'I have only given you a simple statement of the facts,' replied Elsie; 'to know our feelings by the way, the delight we experienced, all we learned, including geography and topography, and the life and health we drank in at every step, you must take that very same walk.'
'More inscrutable mysteries!' returned Aunt Sarah.
'Yes,' said Lucy D——, 'inscrutable, and yet subtilely vivifying as the breath of their Author, the Great Architect of this glorious universe.'
OUR GOVERNMENT AND THE BLACKS.
All thoughtful minds are profoundly conscious that the problems of war are not the last and most important to be solved in our national affairs. It is clear enough that this great convulsion must end; and end, too, in the total extinction of that stupendous system of iniquity in the interests of which it was projected. President Lincoln's Proclamation of emancipation throughout rebeldom, and the recent order to enlist the slaves throughout the Border States in military service to the Government, emancipating all thus enlisted, whether slaves of loyal or disloyal masters, with the certainty that there is to be no cessation to the grand achievements of our arms short of the completest success, all conspire to assure us that the dreadful disorder hitherto consuming our national vitals is to pass finally away in the convulsive disease of its last throes, so distressing to us all. It being thus certain that this consecrated crime is to be dismantled, dishonored, and abandoned forever, the question is forced upon us: 'What is to be done with the negroes?' Some four millions of human beings, doomed to remorseless servitude, denied the static force of social law, forbidden by positive law the rights of education, through which alone are attained the culture and refinement of real manhood—these are the 'freedmen' just emerging from the most insignificant nonage to the sublime personality of citizenship in a Government of the people. Such being practically their attitude, what are the real demands and needs in the case?
Reputed statesmen, journalists, public speakers, and politicians are all ready enough to determine the matter. 'Let them alone,' say they. 'They are needed where they are; and the respective wants of capital and labor will regulate the intercourse between these simple and uncultured people and the powerful and shrewd men who henceforth are to buy their service.' Such, in our humble opinion, is not the wisdom of sound, healthy statesmanship. Let us see.