The people take the oil to the store and exchange it for shoes and calico and safety-pins, and all the things they need. The storekeeper sells the oil to the manufacturers, who purify it and make it into flavoring extracts, and then the druggists use it in making medicines and tooth-powder, and the candy-makers flavor some of their candies with it, and the perfumers mix it with other things to make perfumes and scented soap. A great deal of this oil comes from the North Carolina mountains, and is made in the woods, as I have told you. Well, when Little Mitchell’s lady had looked at the birch-still long enough, they went on until they got to Blowing Rock. And this is a very wonderful place. VII LITTLE MITCHELL’S FIRST CAR-RIDE You can see three thunder-storms at once from Blowing Rock. Perhaps sometimes you can see more than that number. This is because Blowing Rock is on the edge of a mountain, where you can look off and off and off,—oh, so far, over a sea of mountains, where the storms gather. You know a thunder-storm is not very big; it is only as big as two or three clouds close together, and these clouds may be rather small. It is queer to see the rain pouring down in long straight lines over one part of the mountains, while all the rest is in sunshine. Little Mitchell’s lady used to like to watch the thunder-storms, but Little Mitchell did not care anything about them. He preferred going with the lady to the big rock from which the little village of Blowing Rock gets its name. The Indians named it long ago, because when the wind is in the right quarter it blows so hard you cannot throw anything over the rock. If you try to throw your handkerchief or your hat over, you cannot do it, because the wind flings it back to you. Sometimes it blows so strong you couldn’t even jump over,—so people say. But I should not like to try that, no matter how hard the wind blew; it is such a very long way down to the tree-tops at the foot of the rock! What Little Mitchell liked at the big rock was the sunshine and the fine places to run about; but he never ran far from his lady, and at the slightest noise he would scurry back to her. There were some dear little children at Blowing Rock; but you know how Mitchell felt on that subject! He would have nothing to do with them, and if one of them took him up he would squirm and squeal so that he was quickly dropped. It was at Blowing Rock that he found out he could hop. His lady used to let him out of his box early in the morning, so that he could run around the room and exercise his muscles. She was afraid to take him outside with her unless she went a long way off, on account of the cats. So he would frolic with her, and jump at her hand under the bed-covers in the early morning, and when she got up he would play about the room, run over the table, look at everything on the bureau, including his own funny little face in the looking-glass; and one day he found out he could hop.