“Never heard of such a thing in my life,” I replied, “though a much greater mistake might be made.”

“What then, in the name of goodness, have you been talking about?” inquired Mrs. H——.

“The country of course,” I replied.

I had just returned from a business trip to Vermont—­who ever thought that Vermont would be traversed by railroads, or that the echoes which dwell among her precipices and mountain fastnesses, would ever wake to the snort of the iron horse?  Who ever thought that the locomotive would go screaming and thundering along the base of the Green Mountains, hurling its ponderous train, loaded with human freight, along the narrow valleys above which mountain peaks hide their heads in the clouds?  How old Ethan Allen and General Stark, “Old Put,” and the other glorious names that enrich the pages of our revolutionary history, would open their eyes in astonishment, if they could come back from “the other side of Jordan,” and sit for a little while on their own tombstones in sight of the railroads, and see the trains as they go rushing like a tornado along their native valleys.

I had made up my mind that morning, all at once, to go into the country.  It was a sudden resolve, but I acted upon it.  Going into the country is a very different thing from what it used to be.  There is no packing of trunks, or taking leave of friends.  You take your satchel or travelling bag, kiss your wife in a hurry at the door, and jump aboard of the cars; the whistle sounds, the locomotive breathes hoarsely for a moment, and you are off like a shot.  In ten minutes the suburbs are behind you; the fields and farms are flying to the rear; you dash through the woods and see the trees dodging and leaping behind and around each other, performing the dance of the witches “in most admired confusion;” in three hours you are among the hills of Massachusetts, the mountains of Vermont, on the borders of the majestic Hudson, in the beautiful valley of the Mohawk, a hundred miles from the good city of Albany, where you can tramp among the wild or tame things of nature to your heart’s content.

I had for the moment no particular place in view.  What I wanted was, to get outside of the city, among the hills, where I could see the old woods, the streams, the mountains, and get a breath of fresh air, such as I used to breathe.  I wanted to be free and comfortable for a month; to lay around loose in a promiscuous way among the hills, where beautiful lakes lay sleeping in their quiet loveliness; where the rivers flow on their everlasting course through primeval forests; where the moose, the deer, the panther and the wolf still range, and where the speckled trout sport in the crystal waters.  I had made up my mind to throw off the cares and anxieties of business, and visit that great institution spread out all around us by the Almighty, to make men healthier, wiser, better.  I had resolved to go into the country.  That was a fixed fact.  But where?