up the tortuous channel of the Hudson river,--lies the little village
of Wheathedge. A more beautiful site even this most beautiful of
rivers does not possess. As I sit now in my library, I raise my eyes
from my writing and look east to see the morning sun just rising in
the gap and pouring a long golden flood of light upon the awaking
village below and about me, and gilding the spires of the not far
distant city of Newtown, and making even its smoke ethereal, as
though throngs of angels hung over the city unrecognized by its too
busy inhabitants. Before me the majestic river broadens out into a
bay where now the ice-boats play back and forth, and day after day
is repeated the merry dance of many skaters--about the only kind of
dance I thoroughly believe in. If I stand on the porch upon which
one of my library windows opens, and look to the east, I see the
mountain clad with its primeval forest, crowding down to the water's
edge. It looks as though one might naturally expect to come upon a
camp of Indian wigwams there. Two years ago a wild-cat was shot in
those same woods and stuffed by the hunters, and it still stands in
the ante-room of the public school, the first, and last, and only
contribution to an incipient museum of natural history which the
sole scientific enthusiast of Wheathedge has founded--in imagination.
Last year Harry stumbled on a whole nest of rattlesnakes, to his and
their infinite alarm--and to ours too when afterwards he told us the
story of his adventure. If I turn and look to the other side of the
river, I see a broad and laughing valley,--grim in the beautiful
death of winter now however,--through which the Newtown railroad,
like the Star of Empire, westward takes its way. For the village of
Wheathedge, scattered along the mountain side, looks down from its
elevated situation on a wide expanse of country. Like Jerusalem of
old,--only, if I can judge anything from the accounts of Palestinian
travelers, a good deal more so,--it is beautiful for situation, and