Though grief and pain may come tomorrow.

--Wordsworth.


The ancients believed that the alchemists could create rose
blooms out of their ashes. We are prone to believe it for, at
the close of a fair New England day we have seen the Master
Alchemist, the sun, beneath his spacious workshop of July skies,
transmuting the gray mists and vapors into sunset's glow; and
lo! we had the blooming roses there. He melted his many
ingredients with the falling dew and distilled from them the
gold with which he burnished the western sky, making it glow
like a glassy sea. Seizing upon some more potent fluid, he threw
it among the fleecy clouds, kindling them all along the horizon
until they shone like a vast lake of flame; then taking his
magic wand, he waved it over the glowing mass and crimson
changed to rosy pink, pink to glowing purple; forming those
royal gates through which the magician passed behind the distant
foothills of the Adirondacks.

During such a pageant of splendor as this o'er head, did we
first behold the placid waters of Lake Champlain.

Far away beyond the Vermont shore rose the Green mountains
behind their misty veils of purplish-blue. High above the lower
undulations loomed the forest crowned ridges, gloriously colored
and radiant, forming a mysterious yet fitting background for the
exquisite picture before us. The nearer hills from their tops
and extending far down their sides were covered with evergreens;