August 11. At Amesbury,--with two of the dearest friends my life is blessed with,--dear quiet-loving Lizzie, and her poet brother. I love to sit with them in the still Quaker worship, and they love the free air and all the beautiful things as much as they do all the good and spiritual. The harebells nodding in shade and shine on the steep banks of the Merrimac, the sparkle of the waters, the blue of the sky, the balm of the air, and the atmosphere of grave sweet friendliness which I breathed for one calm “First-day” are never to be forgotten. August 20. One of the stillest moonlight evenings,--not a sound heard but the bleat of a lamb, and the murmur of the river; all the rest a cool, broad, friendly mountainous silence. Peace comes down with the soft clouds and mists that veil the hills; the Pemigewasset sings all night in the moonshine, and I lie and dream of the beauty of those hill-outlines around Winnipiseogee, that I looked upon with so satisfied a greeting from the car window on my way hither. The mountains do not know their own beauty anywhere but by a lakeside. So it is: beauty sets us longing for other beauty; the clouds moving above their summits suggest possibilities that earthly summits, at their grandest, can never attain. And no dream can suggest the possibilities of the beautiful that “shall be revealed.” August 24. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, and the ear with hearing,” and one can never tire of the vision of mountain landscapes, and the quiet song of summer rivers. Every day since I have been here in this beautiful village of Campton, I have driven through some new region; sometimes into the very heart of the hills, where nothing is to be seen but swelling slopes on every side, hills which have not quite attained mountainhood, but which would be mountains anywhere but in the “Granite State;” and sometimes out into the interval openings of the river; with new views of “Alps on Alps” on the northern horizon, the gate of the Franconia Notch opening dimly afar with its mountain haystacks piled beside it. It is rest to soul and body to be among these mountains; one thing only is lacking; the friends I had hoped to see here are not with me. But too much joy is not to be looked for; let me hope that they are among scenes more beautiful, and with dearer friends than I. Yet how delightful it would have been, to be with the best friends, among the most beautiful scenes. August 25. I am enjoying the society of my old friend and former associate teacher. She is more gifted than I, in most ways, and it is pleasant to talk to some one who, you take it for granted, has a clearer understanding, and deeper insight, and more adequate expression than yourself. August 28. Yesterday a rare treat; a ride to Waterville (to the “end of the wood” as they speak of it here) in a three-seated open wagon. I wish they would have only open ones for mountain travel.