How To Do It | Page 5

in the
White Mountains. "Staying in the White Mountains" does not mean
climbing on top of a stage-coach at Centre Harbor, and riding by day
and by night for forty-eight hours till you fling yourself into a
railroad-car at Littleton, and cry out that "you have done them." No. It
means just living with a prospect before your eye of a hundred miles'
radius, as you may have at Bethlehem or the Flume; or, perhaps, a
valley and a set of hills, which never by accident look twice the same,
as you may have at the Glen House or Dolly Cop's or at Waterville; or
with a gorge behind the house, which you may thread and thread and
thread day in and out, and still not come out upon the cleft rock from
which flows the first drop of the lovely stream, as you may do at
Jackson. It means living front to front, lip to lip, with Nature at her
loveliest, Echo at her most mysterious, with Heaven at its brightest and
Earth at its greenest, and, all this time, breathing, with every breath, an
atmosphere which is the elixir of life, so pure and sweet and strong. At
Greely's you are, I believe, on the highest land inhabited in America.
That land has a pure air upon it. Well, as I say, we were staying in the
White Mountains. Of course the young folks wanted to go up Mount
Washington. We had all been up Osceola and Black Mountain, and
some of us had gone up on Mount Carter, and one or two had been on
Mount Lafayette. But this was as nothing till we had stood on Mount
Washington himself. So I told Hatty Fielding and Laura to go on to the
railroad-station and join a party we knew that were going up from there,
while Jo Gresham and Stephen and the two Fergusons and I would go
up on foot by a route I knew from Randolph over the real Mount
Adams. Nobody had been up that particular branch of Israel's run since
Channing and I did in 1841. Will Hackmatack, who was with us, had a
blister on his foot, so he went with the riding party. He said that was
the reason, perhaps he thought so. The truth was he wanted to go with
Laura, and nobody need be ashamed of that any day.
I spare you the account of Israel's river, and of the lovely little cascade
at its very source, where it leaps out between two rocks. I spare you the
hour when we lay under the spruces while it rained, and the little birds,
ignorant of men and boys, hopped tamely round us. I spare you even

the rainbow, more than a semicircle, which we saw from Mount Adams.
Safely, wetly, and hungry, we five arrived at the Tiptop House about
six, amid the congratulations of those who had ridden. The two girls
and Will had come safely up by the cars,--and who do you think had
got in at the last moment when the train started but Pauline and her
father, who had made a party up from Portland and had with them Ellen
Liston and Sarah Clavers. And who do you think had appeared in the
Glen House party, when they came, but Esther and her mother and
Edward Holiday and his father. Up to this moment of their lives some
of these young people had never seen other some. But some had, and
we had not long been standing on the rocks making out Sebago and the
water beyond Portland before they were all very well acquainted. All
fourteen of us went in to supper, and were just beginning on the goat's
milk, when a cry was heard that a party of young men in uniform were
approaching from the head of Tuckerman's Ravine. Jo and Oliver ran
out, and in a moment returned to wrench us all from our corn-cakes that
we might welcome the New Limerick boat-club, who were on a
pedestrian trip and had come up the Parkman Notch that day. Nice,
brave fellows they were,--a little foot-sore. Who should be among them
but Tom himself and Bob Edmeston. They all went and washed, and
then with some difficulty we all got through tea, when the night party
from the Notch House was announced on horseback, and we sallied
forth to welcome them. Nineteen in all, from all nations. Two Japanese
princes, and the Secretary of the Dutch legation, and so on, as usual;
but what was not as usual, jolly Mr. Waters and his jollier wife were
there,--she astride on her saddle, as is the sensible fashion of the Notch
House,--and, in the long stretching line, we made out Clara Waters and
Clem, not together,