The road, slowly ascending the long wooded slope, wound its way through the forest until it brought me to the mountain path which climbs, with many a halt and pause, to the very summit. Dense foliage overshadows it, a little thinner now that the hand of autumn has begun to disrobe the trees. Great rocks often lie in the course of the path and send it in a narrow curve around them. Sometimes one comes upon a bold ascent up the face of a projecting cliff; sometimes one plunges into the very heart of the shadows as they gather over the rocky channel of the brook that later will run foaming down to the valley. Step by step one widens his horizon, although it is only at intervals that he is able to note his progress upward. At the base of the mountain one saw only a circle of hills, and the long sweep of wooded slopes which converge in the valley; gradually the horizon widens as one climbs beyond the summit lines of the lower hills; at turns in the path, where it crosses some rocky declivity, one looks out upon a landscape into which some new feature enters with every new outlook; one range of hills after another sinks below the level of vision, and discloses another strip of undiscovered country beyond; and so one climbs, step by step, into the glory of a new world. The solitude, the silence, the radiant beauty of the morning, the expanding sweep of hills and valleys at one's feet, fill one with eager longing for the unbroken circle of sky at the summit, and prepare one for the thrill of joy with which the soul answers the outspread vision.