O dear! don't you wish you were at Waterville now?

Now, if you please, my dear Fanchon, we will not go any further into the
places where I got acquainted with the heroes and heroines of this book.
Allow, of those mentioned here, four to the Latin school, five to the
Unity Sunday school, six to the South Congregational, seven to vacation
acquaintance, credit me with nine children of my own and ten brothers and
sisters, and you will find no difficulty in selecting who of these are
which of those, if you have ever studied the science of "Indeterminate
Analysis" in Professor Smythe's Algebra.

"Dear Mr. Hale, you are making fun of us. We never know when you are
in earnest."

Do not be in the least afraid, dear Florence. Remember that a central rule
for comfort in life is this, "Nobody was ever written down an ass, except
by himself."

Now I will tell you how and when the particular thirty-four names above
happened to come together.

We were, a few of us, staying at the White Mountains. I think no New
England summer is quite perfect unless you stay at least a day 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