After a day or two of rest, how glad we are to be in motion once more, and how we pity the people who are forced to remain stationary at tiresome springs and in village hotels! Even when there is nothing in especial to be seen, it is a delight to be in the open air, with the picturesque country spread around one, to bowl over good roads, to cross flashing streams, to feel the pleasant breeze in one’s face, to watch the shadows on the hills, or the bosky depths of green woods. How many trivial yet delightful things occur in the course of such journeyings! There are wayside lunches on mossy rocks; there are fruit-trees to be rifled, and hills to be climbed; there are inhabitants of the country to be cross-questioned with regard to distances, concerning which no two give the same account; there are roads to be lost and found—above all, there are many jests and much gay laughter, and the infinite freshness and sweetness of Nature in all the wide and varying scene, the bending sky, and streaming sunshine. “Why does not everybody spend the summer in this manner?” says Mrs. Cardigan, enthusiastically. “It is true that women, poor creatures! have not much more choice with regard to their holidays than with regard to anything else; but men are different. How _they_ can prefer lounging about a watering-place to traveling in this manner is something I cannot understand.” “The best class of men—those with most manliness about them—do not prefer it,” says Eric. “You rarely find them among the dancers in hotel ballrooms or the loungers on hotel piazzas. But you may meet them by the hundreds with fishing-rods and rifles all through these mountains. Yonder is a party of the kind now.” He points as he speaks to a wagon which we are in the act of passing. It contains a tent and other provisions for camping out. Half a dozen young men in hunting-shirts— several of them carrying guns on their shoulders—tramp alongside. They lift their hats as we pass, showing sunburned faces beneath—the faces of gentlemen unmistakably. Eric returns their salutation, and then inquires— “Where bound?” “To the Balsam Mountains, for fishing and hunting,” answers one of the number. “Hope you’ll have good luck.” “Much obliged.” We all bow and smile—then glance back as we wind round a curve of the road, in time to see the equestrian members of our party halt and speak to them. Charley apparently finds an acquaintance, for a general hand-shaking takes place. “Now Sylvia is in her element,” says Eric. “How she will question those fellows, and indirectly flatter them, and set them at their ease by her cordial frankness! In ten minutes she will draw out of them all their information—and anything else they may possess.” “I never knew any one with a greater gift of winning the popular heart than she possesses,” says Mrs. Cardigan. “What an invaluable wife she would make for a politician!”