I have kept my subject out-of-doors. It is well always to have at least one point of originality. Let it be mine, in the present instance, that I have said nothing about the pleasures of the fireside, about long evenings and drawn curtains. If I were in winter's place, I should not greatly care to hear people tell how comfortable they could make themselves by jealously shutting me out. Their speech might be eloquent, and their language eulogistic; but somehow I should not feel that they were praising _me_. A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. I will go lose myself.--SHAKESPEARE. There are two sayings of Scripture which to my mind seem peculiarly appropriate for pleasant Sundays,--"Behold the fowls of the air," and "Consider the lilies." The first is a morning text, as anybody may see, while the second is more conveniently practiced upon later in the day, when the dew is off the grass. With certain of the more esoteric doctrines of the Bible (the duty of turning the other cheek, for example, or of selling all that one has and giving to the poor) we may sometimes be troubled what to do,--unless, like the world in general, we turn them over to Count Tolstoï and his followers; but such precepts as I have quoted nobody is likely ever to quarrel with, least of all any "natural man." For myself, I find them always a comfort, no matter what my mood or condition, while their observance becomes doubly agreeable when I am away from home; the thought of beholding a strange species of fowl, or of considering a new sort of lily, proving even more attractive than the prospect of listening to a new minister, or, what is somewhat less probable, of hearing a new sermon. Thus it was with me, not long ago, when I found myself suddenly left alone at a small hotel in the Franconia Valley. The day was lowery, as days in the mountains are apt to be; but when duty goes along with inclination, a possible sprinkling is no very serious hindrance. Besides, a fortnight of "catching weather" had brought me into a state of something like philosophical indifference. I must be reckoned either with the just or with the unjust,--so I had come to reason,--and of course must expect now and then to be rained on. Accordingly, after dinner I tucked my faithful umbrella under my arm, and started up the Notch road.