as beautiful and bright. So, haloed with magnificence, an
earth-born bark on fairy waters, completely circled by this
glory of the skies and seas, we pass through our triumphal
gateway "deep into the dying day," and are presently doused in
the mud at Rouse's Point. Rouse's Point is undoubtedly a very
good place, and they were good women there, and took good care
of us; but Rouse's Point is a dreadful place to wake up in
when you have been in Dream-Land,--especially when a circus is
there, singing and shouting under your windows all night long.
I wonder when circus-people sleep, or do they not sleep at all,
but keep up a perpetual ground and lofty tumbling? From
Rouse's Point through Northern New York, through endless woods
and leagues of brilliant fire-weed, the spirit of the dead
flames that raved through the woods, past corn-fields that
looked rather "skimpy," certainly not to be compared to a
corn-field I wot of, whose owner has a mono-mania on the
subject of corn and potatoes, and fertilizes his fields with
his own blood and brain,--a snort, a rush, a shriek, and the
hundred miles is accomplished, and we are at Ogdensburg, a
smart little town, like all American towns, with handsome
residences up, and handsomer ones going up, with haberdashers'
shops, and lawyers' offices, and judges' robes, and most
hospitable citizens,--one at least,--and all the implements and
machinery of government and self-direction, not excepting a
huge tent for political speaking and many political speeches,
and everybody alert, public-spirited, and keyed up to the
highest pitch. All this is interesting, but we have seen it
ever since we were born, and we look away with wistful eyes to
the north; for this broad, majestic river stretching sky-ward
like the ocean, is the Lawrence. Up this river, on the day of