believe that my tales were not always so cold as he may find them
now. With each specimen will be given a sketch of the circumstances
in which the story was told. Thus my air-drawn pictures will be set
in frames perhaps more valuable than the pictures themselves, since
they will be embossed with groups of characteristic figures, amid
the lake and mountain scenery, the villages and fertile fields, of
our native land. But I write the book for the sake of its moral,
which many a dreaming youth may profit by, though it is the
experience of a wandering story-teller.



A FLIGHT IN THE FOG.

I set out on my rambles one morning in June about sunrise. The day
promised to be fair, though at that early hour a heavy mist lay
along the earth and settled in minute globules on the folds of my
clothes, so that I looked precisely as if touched with a hoar-frost.
The sky was quite obscured, and the trees and houses invisible till
they grew out of the fog as I came close upon them. There is a hill
towards the west whence the road goes abruptly down, holding a level
course through the village and ascending an eminence on the other
side, behind which it disappears. The whole view comprises an
extent of half a mile. Here I paused; and, while gazing through the
misty veil, it partially rose and swept away with so sudden an
effect that a gray cloud seemed to have taken the aspect of a small
white town. A thin vapor being still diffused through the
atmosphere, the wreaths and pillars of fog, whether hung in air or
based on earth, appeared not less substantial than the edifices, and
gave their own indistinctness to the whole. It was singular that