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 operaglass 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 dream-like 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