“Here is shelter and outlook, deep rest and wide room; The pine woods behind, breathing balm out of gloom; Before, the great hills over vast levels lean,-- A glory of purple, a splendor of green. As a new earth and heaven, ye are mine once again, Ye beautiful meadows and mountains of Maine.” She always enjoyed Ossipee Park, with its wonderful brook, “set in the freshness of perfect green,” and watched it widen into pools and leap into cascades. She wrote of it, “Ah! this is the sort of retreat for friends who like to meet or separate within the sound of a voice which surely wins them together again side by side.” Bethlehem, besides giving her freedom from hay-fever, was always “the beautiful.” Moosilauke was her favorite summit. From these places she generally wrote charming letters to the Portland “Transcript,” which its readers will remember, and others may judge of by the following from Wood-Giant’s Hill, Centre Harbor. “There is a peculiar charm in New Hampshire hill scenery just at this season, before the roses have faded, or the hay is mown, or the bobolinks have ceased singing among the clover blossoms, and while the midsummer-tide is rolling up over all, and blending all in haze and heat,--a mingling of freshness and ripeness that is indescribably lovely. One should surely be among the hills before the Fourth of July, to catch the best of their beauty, as well as to escape the dust and distractions of the patriotic anniversary. “To sit at a western window and look off upon the Beulah-like landscape, slope upon slope of rolling, forest-crowned hills ascending towards bluer heights which lose themselves among dim lines of half-revealed higher horizons--to feel the air sweeping across from the softly-blended infinite spaces, over pine woods and fields in full flower--to breathe it all in like the odor of some divine nectar--is there anything like it in the whole year, except at the meeting point of June and July, and in such a region as this. For we know that there are lakes all around us, sleeping unseen in the midsummer haze, and we know that the invisible mountains lie just beyond those lovely ascending distances before us. “And so, when a sweeter waft of coolness refreshes every sense, and we ask with wonder what makes it so sweet, the answer seems borne onward with its very breath:-- “‘The gale informs us, laden with the scent.’ “It brings us the spice of pine woods and the clear drip of ice-cold waterfalls; the breath of pond lilies and sweet-brier and unmown scented grasses, clover-tops and mountain-tops, blended in one draught; and that delicate bubble of song which rises from the meadows, the faint farewell chorus of summer birds that seem loth to go, makes the full cup overflow with musical foam.