Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/411

Rh was beautiful, so also was the excursion amid the scenery of the rapid though shallow little river Ausable, where the rocks present the appearance of regular inaccessible fortress-walls of a most remarkable character. I should, however, have enjoyed it all much more if I had not been called upon to reply to so many useless questions. There was one lady in particular, with a sharp, shrill voice, who tormented me in this style;—“Where are you intending to go when you leave this? Whence did you come from, hither? With whom did you stay there? Who did you see at their house?” and so on.

Oh! that people were but a little more like the objects of nature, that they approached each other for some definite purpose, and had a pleasure in influencing each other by silent communication of this; how much more would they then allure from us, how much more would they then know of us than by these senseless, merely outward questionings, and which the better class in this country reprobate and ridicule as much as any foreigner whatever. Neither was there a want in this pic-nic of persons such as I have just wished for. There was in particular one charming young lady of very intellectual character, and as fresh as the singing brook or the waving tree. It was an agreeable invigoration to me to sit by her, to look at her, to listen to her conversation which was overflowing with soul.

Whenever I take a fancy to a lady, and we are mutually attracted to each other, it generally happens that I very soon learn something of her biography. In that of this amiable young lady I was struck with the following:

She was overwhelmed by a severe and crushing affliction; she felt that she must either yield to it or—travel away from it, from her own thoughts, from herself. Without any fixed plan or any other object than to get away, she seated herself in a railway carriage and let the