determination to get on top, arose,--and got in top. So many of these
gentlemen arose in the different states, and they were so clever, and
they found so many chinks in the Constitution to crawl through and steal
the people's chestnuts, that the Era may be called the Boss-Era. After
the Boss came along certain Things without souls, but of many minds, and
found more chinks in the Constitution: bigger chinks, for the Things were
bigger, and they stole more chestnuts. But I am getting far ahead of my
love-story--and of my book.

The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters,
come to an end: and not to a happy end--otherwise there would be no book.
Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page, it is
only fair to tell him that there is another and a much longer love story
later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may
not be disappointed.

The hills seem to leap up against the sky as I describe that region where
Cynthia Ware was born, and the very old country names help to summon up
the picture. Coniston Mountain, called by some the Blue Mountain, clad in
Hercynian forests, ten good miles in length, north and south, with its
notch road that winds over the saddle behind the withers of it. Coniston
Water, that oozes out from under the loam in a hundred places, on the
eastern slope, gathers into a rushing stream to cleave the very granite,
flows southward around the south end of Coniston Mountain, and having
turned the mills at Brampton, idles through meadows westward in its own
green valley until it comes to Harwich, where it works again and tumbles
into a river. Brampton and Harwich are rivals, but Coniston Water gives
of its power impartially to each. From the little farm clearings on the
western slope of Coniston Mountain you can sweep the broad valley of a
certain broad river where grew (and grow still) the giant pines that gave