It is likely that you will be the least in the world tired and a good
deal sunburnt when you reach the Glen House; and, in defiance of all
the physiologies, you will eat a hearty supper and go right to bed, and
it won't hurt you in the least. Nothing ever does among the mountains.
The first you will know, you open your eyes and it is morning, and
there is Mount Washington coming right in at your window, bearing down
upon you with his seamed and shadowy massiveness, and you will forget
bow rough and rocky he was yesterday, and will pay homage once more to
his dignity of imperial purple and his solemn royalty.
The moment you are well awake, you find you are twice as good as new,
and after breakfast, if you are sagacious, no one belonging to you will
have any peace until you are striking out into the woods again,--the
green, murmurous woods, tenanted by innumerable hosts of butterflies in
their sunny outskirts, light-winged Psyches hovering in the warm, rich
air, stained and spotted and splashed with every bright hue of yellow
and scarlet and russet, set off against brilliant blacks and whites;
dark, cool woods carpeted with mosses thick, soft, voluptuous with the
silent tribute of ages, and in their luxurious depths your willing feet
are cushioned,--more blessed than feet of Persian princess crushing her
woven lilies and roses; the tender, sweet-scented woods lighted with
bright wood-sorrel, and fragrant with dews and damps;--to the Garnet
pool, perhaps, first, where the water has rounded out a basin in the
rock, and with incessant whirls and eddies has hollowed numerous little
sockets, smooth and regular, till you could fancy yourself looking upon
the remains of a petrified, sprawling, and half-submerged monster.
Where the water is still, it is beautifully colored and shadowed with
the surrounding verdancy and flickering light and motion. If you have
courage and a firm foothold, if you will not slip on wet rock, and do
not mind you hands and knees in climbing up a dry one, if you can coil
yourself around a tree that juts out over a path you wish to follow,
you can reach points where the action of the water, violent and
riotous, can be seen in all its reckless force. But, "Don't hold on by
the trees," says Halicarnassus; "you will get your gloves pitchy."
This to me, when I was in imminent danger of pitching myself
incontinently over the rocks, and down into the whirlpools!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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