most unconquerable passion for the mountains-not for one, but for many mountains; in short, a longing to travel through among the mountains. Thought and done! Accordingly, about the latter part of May and beginning of June-to adopt the style of a celebrated American novelist-there might have been seen a solitary buggyman (not exactly "solitary," for he had several young Masters and a little Miss with him) in the gray dawn of morning, winding his way in between the renowned Parnell and the fluted Blue Mountain near the town of London, fully bent, like Sherman, on an overland tramp through the mountains. What a glorious route. First, the long and narrow Path Valley, with its beautiful farms, its grand sloping mountains on either side, and its many small streams, clear and fresh from fountains near at hand. Then, the narrow, Shady Gap, that leads you along a beautiful stream, and on a level winding road, through the Blue Mountain into Tuscarora Valley, where the Shade Mountain confronts you on the west, and turns your course down the valley to the Blue Juniata, which you cross only to pass on through an extension of the same valley to the Susquehanna. What sights along this refreshing route! Long mountains, high mountains, wavy, fluted mountains, cone-like mountains, and all sorts, shapes, and sizes of mountains! What vallies-narrow and broad vallies, level and hilly vallies, shady and sunny vallies, and all sorts, shapes and sizes of vallies! What streams-rills, rivulets, creeks, brooks, runs and rivers! Many a picture of nature did we see. If we had the means of illustrating, by engravings, we might attempt a description; but as it is, we must trust to the imagination of the reader. Every mile presented its own, new, and ever-charming picture. Now, this we call recreation and rest of the mind from mental toil. One forgets completely, for the time, all he ever knew, as well as all he thinks he ought still to study and learn. His brain gets as cool and fresh as a meadow in the morning dew. Nature does it nature, that falls in from all sides like balm upon the bruised and wearied mind-nature, Ever charming, ever new, When will the landscape tire the view! Something over four hundred miles of this kind of travel-which was what the whole programme included-we verily believe to be of more real account, in the way of rest and recreation, than a whole summer at any watering place under the sun. When one thus tastes the old sweets of independent overland travel, how he despises railroads! Just as we approached the Juniata, we had opportunity to exercise this kind of feeling; for one of the mammoth Pennsylvania Central trains dashed by in front of us, as defiant as if it were master of the entire situation. We thought of the remark of the proprietor of a once flourishing tavern on the Allegheny Mountains, whose stand was left high and dry after the great railroad thoroughfare had been completed. A hugh train was puffing along the mountain side in sight of his stand. When we called attention to it as a wonderful improvement, he answered by saying: "Them's the things as takes our custom from us!" We did not look at this train in exactly the same light; but still felt that "them's the things" which cause many persons to forget, and many more never to know, what splendid and refreshing mountain and valley scenery abounds in mid-Pennsylvania. We did not wish ourselves on the train, and would not have accepted even of a dead-head-ship if it had gone the same direction in which our course lay. Railroad travel is good in its place. It is good for business and moneymaking. But it is not good for rest and recreation. Nor is this, we believe, to be found at any given place, but in going to some place; or, rather, in going from one place to another. Are you weary in mind-do you need refreshment of nerves and of spirit,-plunge right into God's free and pure mountain air. Keep away from all noise, business, ledgers, libraries, daily papers, fashions and follies of artificial society. All this you can do by making for the mountains, and taking the overland route. Ho! for the mountains! IN THE QUIET COUNTRY. BY THE EDITOR. When after steady mental labor during more than eight months, you find yourself suddenly released-rise in the morning and find no bell calling you to duty during the day-what a peculiarly new feeling such an event produces. Your first thought is to try to get lonesome, and this is followed by a feeling as if things generally were in danger of coming to an end, when you seem to have nothing to do of the same sort that engaged you before. Then you feel like getting a bad conscience lest you might be doing nothing while others are at work, and as if you had no right to stay idle, even for a while when there is evidently so much to do all around. But gradually your good sense returns to you, and you see the truth of the saying that "all work and no play, will make John (vulgarly called Jack) a dull boy." You begin to reason sensibly, and come to the conclusion, that both God and man agree that there are times when recreation and rest are necessary. Then your first care is to get away from the scene of your toils and cares. Here, then, comes in a variety of tastes, and as there is "no disputing" about these-so an old learned heathen has very correctly informed us-we, of course, let others follow their way, and we follow our own taste. We start for our old home to ruminate and rusticate among the old familiar scenes of our childhood; and as we were fortunate enough not to have been either born or raised in a town, we find these country scenes just the thing for us. Here is the place of deliverance. can forget books and study. Here the old is most intensely new, and nothing wearies or tires. Here we Our first half day we spent with the stave and shingle makers, who are just now engaged on a job near us. There is something exceedingly delightful in this kind of out-door work. Just think of being thus quietly imbedded in the deep green woods, or ensconced in a shady nook along the tranquil mountain side. The sunlight falls charmingly through the gently waving branches of the trees and plays upon the ground. All around the mating birds are building their nests, and holding the most delightful jubilations the while. The very smell of the cleft wood is pleasant as spices. Then through vista of parted tree tops you get a glimpse of the open country lying like variegated mosaic beneath you, and extending out to the distant horizon. This is a goodly sight. Then these stave and shingle makers are happy and cheerful fellows. They can tell you as many tales of the mountains as you may wish to hear. You do not find them surly and snappish like stage drivers, railroad officials, or the dignitaries of a small village post-office who feel as if the dignity of the United States of America would suffer if they should give a civil and satisfactory answer to your questions. These friends of the mountains are not so. They will talk with you in a perfectly civil way; and whatever you may wish to know pertaining to the art and science of their business, you are sure to learn from them. Then you can sit down if you wish, and try your hand on one or more shingles, and if you succeed in making one any thing like as it should be, you get due credit and praise for your effort. On this point we speak from actual trial and experiment. It may even be that some time next winter, some of our readers shall eat bread baked from the flour of a barrel in which shall be staves of our making, or sleep under some new roof covered by some shingles of our own manufacture. How little we know the results of our labors! We cannot follow the history of the work we finish. When we lie snugly housed from the winter storm, we little know to whom we are indebted for our defence against the rain and the snow-what heart hoped and what hand toiled on shingles which cover our heads from the blast. By nature we are related to all men; and for our daily mercies we are indebted to many more persons than we can know, or even conceive. It might be to us as good as a sermon, did we sometimes think of this fact, and try to meditate on it gratefully. As this moral has crept into the thread of our story, we find that by it we have been carried away from our shingle makers. We left them happy and engaged in a healthy and useful calling. Lord Byron once said: "The mechanics and working men who maintain their families, are, in my opinion, the happiest body of men. Poverty is wretchedness, but even poverty is, perhaps, to be preferred to the heartless, unmeaning dissipation of the highest orders." Some one else says: "I have no propensity to envy any one, least of all, the rich and great; but if I were disposed to this weakness, the subject of my envy would be a healthy young man in full possession of his strength and faculties, going forth in the morning to work for his wife and children, or bring them his wages at night." We agree in all this; and for one who can feel it his calling, and is not in the draught of another mission so as to disturb his conscience by sense of other duty, we can conceive of no pleasanter employment, at least in summer, than shingle-making in the cool shade of the mountain's brow. We have also had a stroll along the small brook which, rising at the mountain, wends its gentle way through the meadows once so familiar to our youthful feet, and still so fresh in our memory. Every curve, ripple eddy, with all places deep, or shallow, are reflected in "memory's mellowing glass," just exactly as we find them still to be in fact. The least shake of this alder-bush causes the little fish to shy out just as they did thirty years ago. Of course they are not the same fish, but they have the same ways about them as their predecessors had, and hence serve the purpose of calling up the past most vividly to our remembrance. There is perhaps nothing more wonderful in our nature than that mysterious association of ideas by which the smallest and most common scene or circumstance has the power of calling up whole world of memories. How richly have we experienced the truth of this on our stroll of an hour along this little rill! The changes in this brook and its surroundings, were not many or marked, and yet they had the power of reminding me of countless changes in myself. It seems changeless, and yet becomes the very mirror in which I read, reflected, a thousand changes in my own life; and it seems to have the power of calling them up before me as if by enchantment. No wonder that pagans peopled such like scenes with all kinds of imaginary beings. There seems a presence in and about them; and you walk among them as if in a silent, solemn, unseen company. Its Besides the steady unchangeableness of the flowing brook, we may say the same of the play of children. Childhood seems never to change. joys and sorrows, its whims and fancies, its fun and frolic are always the same from generation to generation. We would not be surprised if some floating fragment of ancient childhood history, should reveal the fact that Abraham, and Moses, and David played soldier, and rode on sticks for horses. The Apocryphal New Testament tells us, that our Saviour and His playmates made birds of mud in the streets of Nazareth, and that the infant Christ, by a miracle, made them fly away. While we, of course, reject this preposterous infant miracle, the apocryphal story at least assures us, that this very interesting and favorite diversion was common among the children nearly two thousand years ago. We ought not, therefore, to be surprised to find that here in the place of our own childhood the children play in exactly the same way, as they did when our own hair was white the first time. A stroll over the play ground of the present generation of children; what a pleasant hour to us was that! Here, under the same old trees are the houses, made by laying stones in a row, thus fencing in the commodious yard. There against the root of the tree is the kitchen, with its cupboard ornamented with pieces of broken dishes. There is the table spread for dinner with its acorn cups and saucers. There sits one of the children with a bush keeping away flies from the victuals. There in one corner is the seamstress at work, while the old lady! is busy getting dinner for the field-hands. This is the same mimic play as that in which our mothers and grandmothers engaged in their day. And where are the boys? Down along the brook digging and walling up wells. Or in the road building forts out of dust. Or at the mud-pool making marbles and birds. Or under some tree digging graves, and holding a funeral over a dead beetle about to be buried! This is childhood. It is not changed. It is the same in all ages, and in all places. We can enter into it all. It touches our sympathies. While we have outgrown this sense and substance of life, we can still easily realize how interesting, how real, and how earnest all these things are to them. Surely childhood has its own separate world in the midst of this same world of our adult life, and I have very sweetly lived in it a good part of this day. Some one has spoken of "sermons in stones." We have realized the truth and something of the force of that saying in our rambles to-day. There is not a familiar object, however insignificant and common to the eyes of others, but hath its utterance for us. It calls up the past, and thus lives again in our own life as it did when it first impressed our youthful heart. Of all these objects we cannot speak. It would take a volume to do justice to this brief visit into Child-land. One thing we know, that is, we enjoy ourselves in this doubly pleasant rustication, and shall tarry a few days longer in this delightful nook of life, to which a world we are now only about half conscious of, seems to lie so near. The seasons of calm weather, Though inland far we be Our souls have sight of that immortal sea BABY LOOKING OUT FOR ME. Two little busy hands patting on the window, Down by the lilac-bush, something white and azure, |