My time was up. I bade adieu to my hostess, shook Tom Winters' hand, and started for the cars with a feeling of satisfaction at having encountered him again, even if it should be for the last time. THE WHITE HILLS IN OCTOBER. Our town friends, who fly from the heat and dust, and menacing diseases and insupportable _ennui_, of their city residence during the months of July and August, may have an escape, but they have little enjoyment. We admire the heroism with which they endure, year after year, the discomforts of a country hotel, or the packing in the narrow, half-furnished bed-rooms and rather warm attics of rural lodging-houses, and the general abatement and contraction of creature-comforts, in such startling contrast to the abounding luxuries of their own city palaces. But they are right. The country, at any discount, is better, in the fearful heats of July and August, than the town with its hot, unquiet nights and polluted air. Any hillside or valley in the country, and a shelter under any roof in or upon them, with the broad cope of heaven above, (not cut into patches and fragments by intervening walls and chimney-tops,) and broad fields, and grass, and corn, and woodlands, and their flowers and freshening dews and breezes, and all Nature's infinite variety, is better than every appliance and contrivance of luxury, with the din, the suffocation, and unrest of city life. Yes, our city friends are right in their summer flight from '----the street, Filled with its ever-shifting train;' but they must not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life--their mere snatch at its midsummer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit--is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare's heroines, only in her court-dress at her uncle the duke's ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then _en pleine toilette_. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months: blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters; changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds; sweet, budding, blossoming May; flowery June; fruitful September; golden, glorious October; dreary, thoughtful November; and all of Winter, with its potent majesty and heroic adversity. But let our citizens come to our rural districts; the more, the better for them! Only let them not imagine they get that 'enough' which is 'as good as a feast.' This preamble was naturally suggested by our autumnal life in the country, and by a recurrence to a late delightful passage through the 'White Hills of New Hampshire.' 'That resort of people that do pass In travel to and fro'