Boys and men were busy making hay and their industry proclaimed
that they had heeded the proverb of "make hay while the sun
shines." Now and then herds of cattle were grazing or standing
up to their knees in the cool of streams. What pictures of
homely contentment they made! How much they add to the beauty of
pastoral scenes!

More and more we were impressed with the grandeur and grace of
the restful, flowing outlines of these mountains. With the light
gray of their granite walls and the vivid green of their
forests, they make beautiful harmony.

We paused along a beautiful sheet of water, Echo lake. A bugler
whom some tourists paid for his crude attempts was doing his
best (which was none too good) to awake the echoes. How harsh
and grating were the tones he made, seeming like the bleat of a
choking calf; yet, with what marvelous sweetness were those
rasping tones transformed by the nymphs of the mountains. After
a few moments' pause they were repeated among the nearer ridges,
but softer and with a rare sweetness as pure and clear as a
thrush's vesper bell. Again a short pause and we heard them
higher, fainter, sweeter, until they died away among the hills;
too fine for our mortal ears to catch. It seemed as if some
sylvan deity, some Mendelssohn or Chopin of this vast forest
solitude heard those harsh notes and putting a golden cornet to
his lips, sent back the melodies the bugler meant to make. As
the last reverberations died away among the hills we thought of
those lines in Emerson's "May Day":

Echo waits with Art and Care