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twg_000000038700 | the falls to-day, and as we stood on the rock where the river comes leaping down and plunging into the lake, whether the march of improvement would ever spread a Lowell around those falls, or subject those wild waters to the uses of civilization. Whether progress would ever invade those mountain regions; or the ingenuity of man ever discover uses | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038701 | for these rocks and boulders, or coin wealth from the sterile and sandy soil of this old wilderness? Hitherto a country like this has been regarded of no value, save for the timber which it grows; and when that is exhausted, as fit only to be abandoned to sterility and desolation. But who can tell whether there may not be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038702 | in these boulders, these rocks, this sandy and unproductive soil, unknown wealth, held in reserve to reward the researches of science in its utilitarian explorations. I am not now speaking of gold, or silver, or any other dross, which men have hitherto wasted their toil to accumulate; but of new discoveries, and new purposes to which these now useless things | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038703 | may be applied; discoveries which may send the tide of emigration surging up from the valleys to mountain regions like these. May it not be that science, while delving among the wrecks of vanished ages, may stumble upon some new principle, or combination of the elements of which these old rocks are composed, that shall give them a value beyond | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038704 | that of the richest lowlands, and make them the centre of a dense and cultivated population?" "Your question," answered Spalding, "is suggestive. Did you ever think what gigantic strides the world has made within the memory of men now living, and who are yet unwilling to be counted as old? Look back for only fifty years, and note what a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038705 | stupendous leap it has taken! Where then were the iron roads over which the locomotive goes thundering on its mission of civilization? where the telegraph, that mocks at time and annihilates space? Hark! there is a new sound breaking the stillness of midnight, and startling the mountain echoes from their sleep of ages! It is the scream of the steam-whistle, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038706 | the snort of the iron horse, the thunder of his hoofs of steel, rushing forward with the speed of the wind, shaking the ground like an earthquake as he moves. A new motor has been harnessed into the service of man, and made to fly with his messages swifter than sound? It is the winged lightning; and as it flashes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038707 | along the wires stretched from city to city, and across continents, carries with unerring certainty every word committed to its charge. Ocean steamers have made but a ferriage of seas. The photographic art has made even the light of the sun a substitute for the pencil of the artist. Everywhere, in all the departments of science, in every branch of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038708 | the arts, improvement, progress, has been going on with a sublimity of achievement unknown in any age of the past. These things are mighty motors which push along civilization, throwing a wonderful energy into the forward impulse of the world. But remember, that though these results are brought about by the advance in the mechanic arts, yet that advance is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038709 | based upon a deeper philosophy, a profounder wisdom, than mere perfectability in those arts. Take the steam-engine--it is a great contrivance, a wonderful invention; but the greatest of all was the discovery of the principle and operation, the practical phenomena of steam itself. The telegraphic machine was a great invention; but the great thing was the development of the science | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038710 | of electricity, the discovery of the secret agency which sent forward the thought entrusted to it swifter than light. The daguerrian instruments, the metallic plates, the prepared paper, were great inventions; but vastly greater was the discovery and development of the phenomena and affinities of light, the mystery of solar influences. "There is hope for the world in all this | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038711 | mighty progress, for with it will one day come the development of the true nature and theory of government, the true solution of the great theory of the social compact, the proper adjustment of the relations of man to man, a right appreciation of the nature and value of human rights. It is bringing forward the masses, elevating the millions | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038712 | who work. It will rouse into activity their innate energies, and bring forth their inward might. It creates THOUGHT to guide the hands that set all this vast machinery in motion. It diffuses and strengthens intellectuality, and the pride of intellectuality, making of the men who work something more than mere machines themselves. It is developing and perfecting a mightier | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038713 | engine than any of man's invention; one that tyrants cannot always control, that kings cannot always manage. That engine is the human mind. Like the steam-engine, it is gathering power, and capability for the exercise of power, and the time will come when it will go crashing, with resistless energy, among thrones, overturning despotisms, upheaving dynasties, sweeping away those false | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038714 | theories of governmental institutions, which guarantee to one class of people a life of luxurious idleness, coupled with a prerogative to rule; and which dooms another class to an hereditary servitude, changeless as fate, and relentless as the grave. It will vindicate the rights, and ennoble the destiny of the masses of the people who work. "But where is this | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038715 | career of progress to end? Is there a limit to this onward movement? We know that the world has made greater advancement in the present century, than it did in the five thousand years preceding it, and that new discoveries in the sciences and the arts are being made every day. Nature has been compelled, and is still being compelled, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038716 | to yield up secrets which have been for centuries regarded as beyond the power of human capacity to penetrate. How is this? Is the world to go on thus, always? Is this rush of progress to remain unchecked, always? If so, what mystery, even of Omnipotent wisdom, will remain unsolved at last? What results will not human energy be able | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038717 | to accomplish? Is the time to come when man shall be able to shape out of clay, fashion from wood, or stone, an image of himself, and, breathing upon it, command it to walk forth a thing of life, and be obeyed? Will he be able to search out a universal antidote to disease? Will he discover the means of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038718 | supplying the human frame with such recuperative power as will nullify the law that prescribes to all flesh the dilapidation and decay of age, of weakness and of death? Will he search out some secret agency which will hold his body in perpetual youth, defying alike the attritions of age, and the ravages of disease? Will he discover how it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038719 | is that time saps the strength, and steals away the vigor of the human system, and a remedy for exhausted and wasted energies? It is not my purpose to advance a theory based upon an affirmative answer to these inquiries, but when we contemplate the stupendous pace at which the world is moving forward, who will venture to assert where | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038720 | the limit to this progress is to be found? You tell me that man cannot _create_; that he can only combine into new shapes elements which God has furnished to his hands. I do not know this. That he _has_ not created I admit; but that he has not capabilities, as yet undeveloped, as a creator, I do not KNOW. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038721 | I will not venture the assertion that the time will ever come when he will have discovered wherein lies the mystery of life; that he will ever find an antidote to disease; that he will search out some recuperative agency stronger than the law of decay, and that will hold the human system in the perpetual vigor, and bloom, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038722 | beauty of maturity. I will not assert that science will, at last, be carried to such perfection, that there shall be no more infirmities of age; that the pestilence will be stayed from walking in the darkness, and destruction from wasting at noonday; that men will cease to grow old, save in years, or that death will be compelled to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038723 | seek its victims only through the channel of accidents, against which forecast will not, and science has no opportunity to guard. What I mean to say is, that I do not KNOW that just such results are beyond the capabilities of human progress. Measuring the future by the past, I cannot demonstrate that such results may not one day be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038724 | attained." "The good time of which you speak," said the Doctor, "when there shall be no more infirmity of age, no growing old, save in years; when there shall be no wasting by disease, through the perfectability of the curative science, or the discovery of some recuperative agency, stronger than the law of decay, will never come. When it is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038725 | granted, as an abstract proposition, that the capabilities of science are sufficient to counteract the mere wasting influence of time upon the human system, you are met by a great practical fact which will overturn your theory. The excesses of the world are a much more fruitful source of disease and death than the attritions of age. There is a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038726 | constant struggle on the part of nature to build up and beautify, to strengthen and recuperate, against the results of human excesses. Not one in a million of those who pass away every year, die from the effects of age, as a primary cause. Hence, you must not only perfect science, but you must perfect the morals and the habits | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038727 | of the human family, before you can exempt them from decay and death. The instincts of men, the appetencies which they possess in common with the whole animal creation, are each made the source of disease, and premature decay. Some men eat too much; some drink too much; some sleep too much; some waste their vital energies in sensual indulgence, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038728 | while all have some vicious habit (I mean with reference to the preservation of life), known or unknown to the world, which, sooner or later, undermines the constitution, and helps on the work of dilapidation. These excesses will always exist; they are inherent in the human constitution, resulting from the very nature of man; they are an inevitable sequence of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038729 | his physical structure, and his intellectual life. To avoid them implies absolute perfectability in every attribute, and that makes him a god. Until man shall have become infinite in wisdom, as well as immaculate in purity, he will continue to indulge, to a greater or less extent, in excesses of some sort, and those excesses will always be an overmatch, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038730 | when superadded to the natural law of decay, for the recuperative efforts of science. You must create a radical reform in every department of life; in business, in social habits, in the fashions, in the mode of living, in everything, before you can hope to reach the Utopia of which you speak. The outrages perpetrated upon nature by the conventionalities | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038731 | of the world alone, would be an insurmountable barrier to the realization of your idea. The necessity for excessive labor to satisfy artificial wants hews away at one end of society, and the indulgence of idleness and ease, at the other. Exposure to the elements, to heat and cold, buries its millions; and too great seclusion, in pursuit of comfort | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038732 | in heated rooms, and a confined and corrupted atmosphere, buries its millions also. Lack of wholesome food fills thousands of graves, and the results of abundance fill other thousands. Lack of appropriate clothing, fitted for the constitution and the seasons, engenders disease and death; and an excess of the same article, fashioned as stupendous folly only can fashion it, engenders | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038733 | vastly more disease and death. There are elements of decay and death furnished to men and women, tempting their weakness, and forced upon their adoption by the conventionalities of life, every day, every hour, and everywhere. It is a part of our civilization, an offshoot of the very progress of which you speak, a sort of necessity in practical results, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038734 | at least, that men _shall_ so live as to wage war against nature, and against themselves; that they shall hurry themselves, or be hurried by inevitable circumstances, into the grave at the earliest possible moment. You may, therefore, dismiss from your mind, my friend, the fanciful idea, that science will ever enable the world to dispense with the cemeteries, or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038735 | that the cities of the dead will, through its agency, cease to flourish. You will find that as science closes up one avenue to the grave, men will force a way to it through another. We shall have to live as our fathers lived, be subject to disease as they were, grow old as they grew old, and die as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038736 | they died. We must submit to the law which has written the doom of decay upon all things, which has made us mortal, and when our time comes we must be content to pass away as the countless millions who preceded us have done." "Well," said Spalding, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe, and rose to retire, under | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038737 | the cover of the tent, for the night, "be it as you say, what matters it? 'I would not live always.' Give to us the hope of an hereafter, a faith that looks through the valley of the shadow of death, and sees immortality, a world of glory beyond, and what matters it how soon the hour of our departure | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038738 | shall come?" . A MYSTERIOUS SOUND--TREED BY A MOOSE--ANGLING FOR A POWDER HORN--AN UNHEEDED WARNING AND THE CONSEQUENCES. As Spalding ceased speaking, there came from away off, over the forest in the direction of the tall mountain peaks, a faint sound like the boom of a cannon, so distant that it could scarcely be heard, and yet it was distinct | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038739 | and palpable to the senses. I say that it came from the direction of the mountains, seen dim and shadowy in the distance, and yet none of us were quite sure of this. We all heard it, but not one of us could assert that the direction from which it came was a fixed fact in his mind. "There, Judge" | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038740 | said Cullen, "I've hearn that sound often among the mountains, and when I've been driftin' about on these lakes, it never seems much louder or nearer. It always seems to come from the mountains, and yet you'll hear it while shantyin' at their base, and it sounds just as faint and far off as it did just now. What it | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038741 | is, or where it comes from, I won't undertake to say. The old Ingins who, five and twenty year ago, fished and hunted over these regions, told of it as a thing to wonder at, and that it was handed along down from generation to generation, as one of the mysteries of this wilderness. I mind once I was out | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038742 | among the Adirondacks, trappin' martin and sable. I shantied for a week with Crop, under the shadow of Mount Marcy. It was twenty odd year ago, and that old mountain stood a good deal further from a clearin' than it does now. Crop and I had a good many hard days' work that trip; but we got a full pack | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038743 | of martin and sable skins, and two or three wolf scalps, besides a bear and a painter, and we didn't complain. Wal, one afternoon, we put up a shanty in an open spot two miles from our regular campin' ground, and built our fire for the night. There was no moon, and though the stars shone out bright and clear, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038744 | yet in the deep shadow of the forest it was dark and gloomy enough. We had eaten our supper, and I was smokin' my last pipe before layin' myself away, when all at once the forest was lighted up like the day. It was all the more light from the sudden glare which broke upon the darkness, and there, for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038745 | an instant, stood the old woods, lighted up like noon, every tree distinct, every mountain, every rock, and valley, as perfect and plain to be seen as if the sun was standin' right above us in the sky. Crop was as much astonished as I was, and he crept to my feet and trembled like a coward, as he crouched | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038746 | beside them. I looked up, and flyin' across the heavens was a great ball of fire, lookin' for all the world as if the sun had broke loose, and was runnin' away in a fright. A long trail of light flashed and streamed along the sky where it passed. It was out of sight in a moment, and the fiery | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038747 | tail it left behind faded into darkness. A little while after, maybe ten minutes after it disappeared, that boomin' sound came driftin' down the wind, and I somehow tho't it was mixed up in some way with that great ball of fire that flew across the sky. Maybe I was wrong, but I've always tho't it was the bustin' into | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038748 | pieces of that fiery thing that lighted up the old woods that night, that broke the forest stillness, like a far off cannon. I never heard it so loud at any other time, and when I hear it now, I always say to myself, there goes another of Nater's fireballs into shivers. I've hearn it in the daytime, when the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038749 | air was still, and the forest voices were hushed, but I never at any other time, day or night, saw what I suspicioned occasioned it. The Ingins used to say it came from the mountains, but it don't. I've hearn some folks pretend that it comes from the bowels of the airth, but it don't; its a thing of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038750 | air, and I've a notion it travels a mighty long way from its startin' place afore it reaches us. "Talkin' about that trip among the Adirondacks, puts me in mind of an adventer I had with a bull moose, on one occasion among them. There are times when sich an animal is dangerous. I've hearn tell of elephants gittin' crazy | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038751 | and breakin' loose from their keepers, or killin' them, and makin' a general smash of whatever comes in their way. I believe its so sometimes with a bull moose; and when the fit is on the animal forgets its timid nater, and is bold and fierce as a tiger. I've seen two sich in my day; one of 'em sent | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038752 | me into a tree, and the other put me around a great hemlock a dozen or twenty times, a good deal faster than I like to travel in a general way, and if I hadn't hamstrung him with my huntin' knife, maybe he'd have been chasin' me round that tree yet. Wal, as I was sayin' I was out among | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038753 | the Adirondacks one fall, airly in November; I'd wounded a deer, and sent Crop forward on his trail to overtake and secure him. It was a big buck, with long horns, and Crop had a pretty good general idea of what sich things meant. He was cautious about cultivatin' too close an acquaintance with such an animal, unless something oncommon | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038754 | obligated him to do so. I heard him bayin' a little way over a ridge layin' gist beyond where I shot the buck. I warn't in any great hurry, for I knew Crop would attend to his case, and I tho't I'd wipe out my rifle afore I loaded it again. I was standin' by the upturned roots of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038755 | tall fir tree that had been blown down, and in fallin' had lodged in a crotch of a great birch, maybe twenty feet from the ground, and broke off. I stepped onto the butt of the fallen spruce, and was takin' my time to clean my gun, when I heard a crashin' among the brush on the other side of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038756 | the ridge, as if some mighty big animal was comin' my way. I walked pretty quick along up the slopin' log till I was, maybe fifteen feet from the ground, and I saw Crop comin' over the ridge, in what the Doctor would call a high state of narvous excitement, with his tail between his legs, lookin' back over his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038757 | shoulder, and expressin' his astonishment in a low, quick bark, at every jump, at something he seemed to regard as mighty onpleasant on his trail. I didn't have to wait long to find out what it was, for about the biggest bull moose I ever happened to see, came crashin' like a steam-engine after him. He wasn't more than two | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038758 | rods behind the dog, and if I ever saw an ugly looking beast, that moose was the one. Every hair seemed to stand towards his head, and if he wasn't in earnest I never saw an animal that was. He was puttin' in his best jumps, and the way he hurried up Crop's cakes was a thing to be astonished | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038759 | at. The dog didn't see me, and seemed to be principled agin stoppin' to inquire my whereabouts. He dashed under the log where I stood, and the moose after him like mad. He seemed to be expectin' aid and comfort from me, as the papers say, and was wonderin', no doubt, where me and my rifle was all this time. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038760 | I called after him, but he was in a hurry and couldn't stop, for there was a thing he didn't care about shakin' hands with, not three rods from his tail. He heard me, though, and took a circle round a great boulder, and the moose after him, and as he got straightened my way, I called him again, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038761 | he saw me. He leaped onto the log and came runnin' up to where I stood, and was mighty glad to be out of the way of them big hoofs and horns that were after him. He was safe now, and he opened his mouth and let off a good deal of tall barkin' at his enemy. The moose saw | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038762 | us, and his fury was the greater because he couldn't get at us. He kept chargin' back and forth under the log we were perched on, and if there wasn't malice in his eye, I wouldn't say so. "When I first saw him, I was standin' with the butt of my rifle on the log, my hand graspin' the barrel, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038763 | and as I caught it up suddenly to load, the string of my powder-horn caught between the muzzle and the ramrod, broke, and the horn fell to the ground. Here was a fix for a hunter to be in. My rifle was empty, and every grain of powder I had in the world was in the horn, fifteen feet below | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038764 | me, on the ground. To go down after it was a thing I was principled agin undertaking considerin' the circumstance of that bull moose with his great horns and the onpleasant temper he seemed to be in. What to do I didn't know. I hollered and shouted at the kritter, thinkin', maybe, that the voice of a human might scare | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038765 | him; but it only made him madder, and every time I hollered he charged under the log more furiously than before. I threw my huntin' cap at him, but he pitched into it, and if he didn't trample it into the ground, as if it was a human, you may shoot me. After a while, he got tired of dashin' | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038766 | back and forth, under the log, and took a stand two or three rods off, and as he eyed us, shook his great horns and stamped with his big hoofs, as much as to say, 'very well, gentlemen, I can wait, don't hurry yourselves, take your time; but I shall stay here as long as you stay up there. And | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038767 | when you do come down, we'll take a turn that won't be pleasant to some of us.' Crop and I took the hint and sat still, thinkin' maybe he'd get over his pet and move off; but he did'nt lean that way at all. He seemed to've made up his mind to stay there as long as we stayed on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038768 | the log, be the same more or less. We'd sat there maybe an hour, when I happened to think of a trollin' line and some fishhooks I had in my pocket, and it came across me that possibly I might fish up my powder horn. So tyin' half a dozen hooks to the end of my line, I laid down | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038769 | on the log to angle for my powder-horn. When I laid down, the old bull made a pass under the log, as if he expected me down there, and charged back again, as if he was disappointed in not runnin' agin me. But he saw 'twan't no use, and took his old stand agin. I dropped down the grapnel, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038770 | after a great many failures, I hooked into the string of the powder horn, and hoisted away. I hauled it up mighty quick, for the old bull seemed to be suspicions that something was goin' on that might have something to do with his futer happiness, and when he got sight of it, the pass he made was a thing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038771 | to stand out of the way of. But he was too late; the powder-horn was safe, and I notified him, as Squire Smith did the cats, to leave them parts in just one minute by the clock. He did'nt pay any attention to the warnin'. I loaded my rifle carefully, and while I was puttin' on the cap, asked the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038772 | gentleman if he calculated to move on, and let peaceable people alone. He didn't condescend to answer a word, looking for all the world like a tiger in savageness. 'Very well,' said I, as I sighted him between the eyes, 'on your head be it,' and pulled. The ball went crashin' through his skull into his brain, and he went | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038773 | down. Crop knew what that meant. He didn't wait to run down the log, but leaped to the ground, and had his teeth in the animal's throat before the echoes of my rifle were done dancin' around among the mountains. I loaded my gun before I came down, thinkin' maybe there might be another bad tempered moose about, but there | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038774 | wasn't. Crop and I learned what we ought to've know before, and that was that it's a safe thing for a hunter to have an extra horn of powder in his pocket, and a loaded rifle in his hand when a mad bull moose is on his trail, and that a slantin' tree is a good thing to get onto | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038775 | at sich a time." . GOOD-BYE--FLOATING DOWN THE RACKETT--A BLACK FOX--A TRICK UPON THE MARTIN TRAPPERS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. We rose with the dawn the next morning, and before the sun was above the hills we were on our way down the lake, to separate as we struck the Rackett; the Doctor and Smith to return by the way of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038776 | Keeseville and the Champlain, and Spalding and myself to drift down that pleasant stream to Pottsdam, and thence to the majestic St. Lawrence, to spend a fortnight among the "Thousand Islands" of that noble river. Near the outlet of the lake is a bold rocky bluff, rising right up out of the deep water twenty feet, against which the waves | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038777 | dash, and around which a romantic bay steals away to hide itself in the old woods. This beautiful bay is always calm, for even the narrow strait which connects it with the open water is divided by a rocky, but wooded island, shutting out alike the winds and the waves from disturbing its repose. It is surrounded by gigantic forest | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038778 | trees, whose shadows make it a cool retreat in the heat of noon, and whose dense foliage fills the air with freshness and fragrance when the sun is hot in the sky. Towards its head, a cold stream comes creeping around the boulders, and dancing and singing down the rocks from a copious spring, a short way back in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038779 | forest. Near where this brook enters we landed at seven o'clock to breakfast. We supplied ourselves with fish by casting across the mouth of the little stream, while our boatmen were preparing a fire. Our sail of eight miles down the lake furnished us with appetites which gave to the beautiful speckled trout we caught there a peculiar relish. We | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038780 | arranged matters so that the Doctor and Smith were to return in one boat to the Saranacs, while Spalding and myself were to move on down the Rackett with the other two. Cullen and Wood were to go with us to Pottsdam, from whence our route lay by railroad to Ogdensburgh. We had, on entering the woods, dispatched our baggage | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038781 | to the former place to await our arrival there. At nine o'clock we launched out upon the lake again. There are two outlets which enter the Rackett, half a mile apart, down the right hand one of which the Doctor and Smith's course lay, and ours down the left. We shook hands with our friends, and lay upon our oars | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038782 | while they passed on towards home, wishing them a pleasant voyage, and a safe return. "I say," shouted Smith, as they were about rounding a point that would hide them from our view, "remember our compact about killing the bear. The glory of that achievement belongs to me, you know. Don't say a word about it when you get home | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038783 | till you see me. I haven't fully made up my mind as to the manner of capturing him, and there must be no contradictions on the subject." "Go ahead," replied Spalding, "we'll be careful of your honor. Drop us a line at Cape Vincent, when you've digested the matter, and we'll stand by you. Good-bye!" "Good-bye!" And our friends disappeared | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038784 | from our sight on their voyage home. "And so," said Spalding, "we are to leave this beautiful lake, and these old forests so soon. I could linger here a month still, enjoying these shady and primitive solitudes. To you and I, the quiet which one finds here is vastly more inviting than it is to the friends who have just | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038785 | left us. The Doctor, of necessity, leads a life of activity, feeling physical weariness as the result of his labors, but little of that strong yearning for intellectual repose which those in your profession or mine so often feel. Smith's life demands excitement. The absence of the cares and toil of business occasions a restlessness and desire of change, which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038786 | makes him discontented here. With them the great charm of this wild region is its novelty. They enjoy its beauties for a season with peculiar relish, but as these become familiar, the spell is broken, and they turn towards home without a regret To you and I, there is something beyond this. We, too, feel and appreciate the beauty of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038787 | these lakes and mountains The hill-sides and placid waters, the forest songs, and wild scenery are pleasant to us; but we enjoy them the more from the intellectual relaxation, the mental quiet and repose, which we find among them. We feel that we are resting, that the process of recuperation, intellectual as well as physical, is going on within us. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038788 | We can almost trace its progress, and we feel that the time spent by us here is full of profit as well as pleasure. At all events, it is so with me, and if duty to others, whose interests it is my business to serve, did not demand my return, I could enjoy another month here with unabated pleasure." "You | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038789 | have left me little," I replied, "to add to what you have already said, in expressing the sources of my enjoyment among these beautiful lakes. Fishing and hunting, considered in the abstract, are things I care but little about. They are pleasant enough in their way, but what brings me here is the strong desire as well as necessity for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038790 | the repose of which you speak. There is a luxury in intellectual rest, when the brain is wearied with protracted toil, which far surpasses the mere animal enjoyment which follows relaxation from physical labor. That rest I cannot find in society. I must seek it among wild and primeval solitudes, where I can be alone with nature in her unadorned | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038791 | simplicity, away from the barbarisms, so to speak, of civilization, where I can act and talk and think as a natural, and not an artificial man, where I can be off my guard, and free from the weight of that armor which the conventionalities of life, the captions espionage of the world compels us to wear, un-tempted by the thousand | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038792 | enticements which society everywhere presents to lure us into unrest." We drifted leisurely down the left hand channel, and entered the Rackett, bidding good-bye to the beautiful lake as a bend in the river hid it from our view. A mile below the junction, the river runs square against a precipice some sixty feet in height, wheeling off at a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038793 | right angle, and stretching away though a natural meadow on either hand, of hundreds of acres in extent. At the base of this precipice, formed by the rocky point of a hill, the water is of unknown depth. Above, and fifty feet from the surface of the river, there are ledges of a foot or two in width, like shelves, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038794 | along which the fox, the fisher, and possibly the panther, creep, instead of travelling over the high ridge extending back into the forest. As we rounded a point which brought us in view of this precipice, Spalding, who was in the forward boat, discovered a black object making its way along the face of the rocks. A signal for silence | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038795 | was given, and the boats were permitted to float with the current in the direction of the precipice. We were forty rods distant, and the animal, whatever it was, had no suspicion of danger. It paused midway across the rocks, looked about, nosing out over the water, and sat down upon its haunches, as if enjoying the beauty of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038796 | scenery around it. In the meantime, the boats had drifted within twenty rods, and Spalding, taking deliberate aim, fired. At the crack of the rifle, the animal leapt dear of the ledge, struck once against the face of the rock some twenty feet below, and then went, end over end, thirty feet into the river. As he struck the water | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038797 | he commenced swimming round and round in a circle, evidently bewildered by Spalding's bullet, or the effect of his involuntary plunge down the rocks. Our men bent to their oars, and had got within five or six rods of it, when it straightened up in alarm for the shore. "Hold on, Cullen," said I, "lay steady for a moment." I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038798 | drew upon the animal, and just as it reached the shore, fired, and it turned over dead. We found it to be a black fox, that had walked out upon the ledge, and thus been added another victim to the indulgence of an idle curiosity. Spalding's bullet had grazed its belly, raking off the hair and graining the skin; mine | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000038799 | had gone through its head. "There, Judge," said Cullen, as he lifted the animal into the boat, "is a kritter that isn't often met with in these parts, and the wonder is, that he didn't discover us as we floated down the stream. He's about the cunningest animal that travels the woods. He's got an eye that's always open, a | 60 | gutenberg |
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