Ethan Crawford's guests were of such a motley description as to form
quite a picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place
like this, at once the pleasure house of fashionable tourists and the
homely inn of country travellers. Among the company at the door were
the mineralogist and the owner of the gold opera glass whom we had
encountered in the Notch; two Georgian gentlemen, who had chilled their
southern blood that morning on the top of Mount Washington; a physician
and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington, and an old squire of
the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all the way from
Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt, Besides these strangers, the
rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a dozen
wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his
paw.

I had joined the party, and had a moment's leisure to examine them
before the echo of Ethan's blast returned from the hill. Not one, but
many echoes had caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its
complicated threads, and found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern
trumpet tone. It was a distinct yet distant and dreamlike symphony
of melodious instruments, as if an airy band had been hidden on the
hillside and made faint music at the summons. No subsequent trial
produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the first. A
field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill,
and gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle
of mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a
separate echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us all
into the house, with the keenest appetites for supper.

It did one's heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in
the parlor and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was