So off we started on the back seat of an open country “express wagon” to find “old Hartington’s farm.” The warm October sun streamed down upon us, the great red and russet rock-broken fields stretched off into the beautiful lonely purple mountain, “heeding his sky affairs,” the dying brakes and weeds sent forth their sweet nutty autumn fragrance, the soft yellow and brown leaves fluttered down on us, and the ripe chestnutburrs fell rustling by our side as we rode through the narrow wood-roads. The hard New England landscape was softened and Orientalized by the yellow autumn tints. The half-sad stillness of dying nature and the warmth of the Indian summer inclined us to ride quietly and thoughtfully along the country roads, but that neither Mr. Simmons, nor his new wagon, nor Jenny, his steed, would for a moment permit. She had the unpleasant habit, so common among country horses, of “slacking-up” suddenly at the foot of every hill. The wagon was a “jump-seat,” so the back seat was not fastened in securely. At every hill (and the New England hills are countless) we and the seat were pitched forward on Mr. Simmons’s back. He seemed to expect this assault and rather enjoy it. To quite counterbalance this sudden stoppage of progression, Jenny would spring forward with much and instantaneous speed whenever she caught sight of Mr. Simmons’s short whip. This whip he used as a pointer in his many and diffuse explanations, so whenever our attention was called to an old house, or a poor “run-out” farm, or “the barn old White hung himself in,” Jenny emphasized the explanation with a twitch of our necks that brought into active play muscles little used before. At last the long hill leading to the Hartington house was reached, the longest and steepest yet seen. The road was almost unused, a mere track, and spoke to our china hunting instincts most favorably of the little intercourse held by the Hartingtons with the rest of the world. Slowly plodded Jenny over the fringed gentians, for here the road was full of them, as open and blue as the October sky over our heads. We had never seen this lovely delicate flower growing elsewhere than sparsely by a brookside or in damp ground, but here, on this rocky hill-side, in this poor soil, it opened its blue eyes in such luxuriance that the road was as full of its azure bloom as in September the fields are yellow with goldenrod, or in June white with daisies. As we turned in from the main country road we passed an elderly man with bowed head, ragged clothes, slouching gait, and a general appearance of extreme depression and sadness more marked even than is usual in the carriage of the New England farmer. As he did not lift his head to look at us, nor nod with the cordial common country form of recognition, we did not speak to him, and he slowly followed us up the hill.