"Have you? Thank you! Then I suppose we can _all_ go up!" replied the Illinoisan, as if the information had been the most serious in the world. "By the way--how are they all, over yonder!" There was something very like a blush on the face of the questioner, and there was something varying very little from that phenomenon on the brown cheek of the other as he answered: "I have not seen much of either," (what did he mean by "either," a word peculiarly applying, in common parlance, to _two_?) "but I believe that they are well." "Still at the Profile?" "Yes, and likely to remain there, for any thing that I know to the contrary." "Any news of any kind? Any more accidents or startling events?" "None--yes, there is one startling event. The Brooks Cunninghames came away the same day that you left. Have you got the old woman here?" "Here? heaven forefend! No!" was the response. Then he added: "Why, by Jupiter, Townsend, you must be a wizard or in some kind of collusion with Meriam! See!--I'll be hanged if there is not the top of a mountain! It _is_ clearing away! Hurrah for Mount Washington!" He darted in at once from the piazza to the office, and Townsend, who had not yet even registered his name as an arrival, followed him. Most of the other passengers from the Profile were by that time registered and scattered away to their rooms for sartorial renovation. A separate book was kept at the office, as usual at such places, over the head of each page of which was printed: "Horses for Mount Washington," and in which, every day, those who wished to secure horses and guides for the succeeding or the first favorable day, registered their names, with the number of animals required and how many of them were to be ridden by ladies. A good many queer autographs might be observed in that book and some of its predecessors, for there was almost always some mischievous clerk behind the counter, amusing himself by telling immense stories to some of the other initiated, just as the un-initiated were coming up to register their names,--about the perils of the ride and how near he or some other person had come to falling over precipices of indefinite thousands of feet. This description of jocular practice very often shook the nerves of young travellers at the moment of booking, even when the frightened person was too far committed or too shame-faced to abandon his project; and there is no doubt that the original collection of chirography thus secured would prove only less interesting, on exhibition, than the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, or----the Emancipation Proclamation!