months old being called an institution?"

"Never heard of such a thing in my life," I replied, "though a much
greater mistake might be made."

"What then, in the name of goodness, have you been talking about?"
inquired Mrs. H----.

"The COUNTRY of course," I replied.

I had just returned from a business trip to Vermont--who ever thought
that Vermont would be traversed by railroads, or that the echoes which
dwell among her precipices and mountain fastnesses, would ever wake to
the snort of the iron horse? Who ever thought that the locomotive
would go screaming and thundering along the base of the Green
Mountains, hurling its ponderous train, loaded with human freight,
along the narrow valleys above which mountain peaks hide their heads
in the clouds? How old Ethan Allen and General Stark, "Old Put," and
the other glorious names that enrich the pages of our revolutionary
history, would open their eyes in astonishment, if they could come
back from "the other side of Jordan," and sit for a little while on
their own tombstones in sight of the railroads, and see the trains as
they go rushing like a tornado along their native valleys.

I had made up my mind that morning, all at once, to go into the
country. It was a sudden resolve, but I acted upon it. Going into the
country is a very different thing from what it used to be. There is no
packing of trunks, or taking leave of friends. You take your satchel
or travelling bag, kiss your wife in a hurry at the door, and jump
aboard of the cars; the whistle sounds, the locomotive breathes