The last thing to be _thought_ of at night is the weather,--the weather and what goes with it and depends upon it, the question of the next day’s programme. In a hill country meteorological prognostications are proverbially difficult; but we have learned to “hit it right” once in a while; and, right or wrong, we never omit our evening forecast. “It looks like a fair day to-morrow,” says one. “Well,” answers the other, with no thought of discourtesy in the use of the subjunctive particle, “if it is, what say you to walking to Bethlehem by the way of Wallace Hill, and taking in Mount Agassiz on our return after dinner?” Or the prophet speaks more doubtfully, and the other says, “Oh well, if it is cloudy and threatening, we will go the Landaff Valley round, and see what birds are in the larch swamp. If it seems to have set in for a steady rain, we can try the Butter Hill road.” And so it goes. In Franconia it must be a very bad half day indeed when we fail to stretch our legs with a five or six mile jaunt. I speak of those of us who foot it. The more ease-loving, or less uneasy members of the party, who keep their carriage, are naturally less independent of outside conditions. When it rains they amuse themselves indoors; a pitch of sensibleness which the rest of us may sometimes regard with a shade of envy, perhaps, though we have never admitted as much to each other, much less to any one else. To plod through the mud is more exhilarating than to sit before a fire; and we leave the question of reasonableness and animal comfort on one side. Time is short, and we decline to waste it on theoretical considerations. Our company, as I say, is divided: carriage people and pedestrians, we may call them; or, if you like, drivers and footmen. The walkers are now no more than the others. Formerly--till this present autumn--they were three. Now, alas, one of them walks no longer on earth. The hills that knew him so well know him no more. The asters and goldenrods bloom, but he comes not to gather them. The maples redden, but he comes not to see them. Yet in a better and truer sense he is with us still; for we remember him, and continually talk of him. If we pass a sphagnum bog, we think how at this point he used to turn aside and put a few mosses into his box. Some professor in Germany, or a scholar in New Haven, had asked him to collect additional specimens. In those days of his sphagnum absorption we called him sometimes the “sphagnostic.”