very nearly to civil war between rival companies racing for the same
cañon; how there is a country not very far away called Caledonia,
populated by the Scotch, who can give points to a New Englander in a
bargain, and how these same Scotch-Americans by birth, name their
townships still after the cities of their thrifty race. It was all as
new and delightful as the steady 'scrunch' of the snow-shoes and the
dazzling silence of the hills.

Beyond the very furthest range, where the pines turn to a faint blue
haze against the one solitary peak--a real mountain and not a
hill--showed like a gigantic thumbnail pointing heavenward.

'And that's Monadnock,' said the man from the West; 'all the hills have
Indian names. You left Wantastiquet on your right coming out of town,'

You know how it often happens that a word shuttles in and out of many
years, waking all sorts of incongruous associations. I had met Monadnock
on paper in a shameless parody of Emerson's style, before ever style or
verse had interest for me. But the word stuck because of a rhyme, in
which one was

... crowned coeval
With Monadnock's crest,
And my wings extended
Touch the East and West.

Later the same word, pursued on the same principle as that blessed one
Mesopotamia, led me to and through Emerson, up to his poem on the peak
itself--the wise old giant 'busy with his sky affairs,' who makes us
sane and sober and free from little things if we trust him. So Monadnock