It is always thus with the new form of life; we must learn to look at it
by its own standard. At first, no doubt my accustomed eye kept saying,
if the mind did not, What! no distant mountains? what, no valleys? But
after a while I would ascend the roof of the house where we lived, and
pass many hours, needing no sight but the moon reigning in the heavens,
or starlight falling upon the lake, till all the lights were out in the
island grove of men beneath my feet, and felt nearer heaven that there
was nothing but this lovely, still reception on the earth; no towering
mountains, no deep tree-shadows, nothing but plain earth and water
bathed in light.

Sunset, as seen from that place, presented most generally, low-lying,
flaky clouds, of the softest serenity, "like," said S., "the Buddhist
tracts."

One night a star shot madly from its sphere, and it had a fair chance to
be seen, but that serenity could not be astonished.

Yes! it was a peculiar beauty of those sunsets and moonlights on the
levels of Chicago which Chamouny or the Trosachs could not make me
forget.

Notwithstanding all the attractions I thus found out by degrees on the
flat shores of the lake, I was delighted when I found myself really on
my way into the country for an excursion of two or three weeks. We set
forth in a strong wagon, almost as large, and with the look of those
used elsewhere for transporting caravans of wild beasteses, loaded with
every thing we might want, in case nobody would give it to us--for
buying and selling were no longer to be counted on--with a pair of
strong horses, able and willing to force their way through mud holes and