The Express creeps slowly along the steel way, under cross-streets, through arched tunnels, and over the Harlem River till the Hudson is reached, and then this world-famed river is followed 142 miles to Albany, the capital of the Empire State.  This tide-water ride on the American Rhine is unsurpassed.  The Express is whirled through tunnels, over bridges, past the magnificent summer houses of the magnates of the metropolis that adorn the high bluffs, past wooded hill and winding dale, grand mountains, and sparkling rivulets.  Every object teems with historic memories.  This ride, in June, is surpassed only when the forests are in a blaze of autumnal splendor.

For twenty miles in sight are the battlemented cliffs of the Palisades.  Mr. Searles was familiar with the facile pen of Washington Irving, and from the car caught sight of “Sunny Side” covered with nourishing vines, grown from slips, which Irving secured from Sir Walter Scott at Abbottsford.

Passing Tarrytown Colonel Harris said, “Here Major Andre was captured, and the treachery of Benedict Arnold exposed, otherwise, we might to-day have been paying tribute to the crown of Great Britain.”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Searles, “George Washington, patriot, hung Major Andre, the spy.  You made Washington president, and we gave Andre a monument in Westminster Abbey.”

Sing Sing and Peekskill were left behind, and the Express was approaching the picturesque Highlands, a source of never failing delight to tourists.  West Point, the site of the famous United States Military Academy, is on the left bank of the Hudson in the very bosom of the Highlands.

The sun set in royal splendor behind the Catskills;

  “And lo! the Catskills print the distant sky,
  And o’er their airy tops the faint clouds driven
  So softly blending that the cheated eye
  Forgets or which is earth, or which is heaven.”

“Mr. Searles,” said Colonel Harris, “before leaving America you must climb the Catskills.  Thousands every summer, escaping from the heat and worry of life, visit those wind-swept ‘hills of the sky.’  There they find rest and happiness in great forests, shady nooks, lovely walks, and fine drives.

“There are several hotels in the vicinity.  From one hotel on an overhanging cliff you behold stretched out before you a hundred miles of the matchless panorama of the Hudson.  The Highlands lie to the south, the Berkshire Hills and Green Mountains to the east, and the Adirondacks to the north.  The latter is a paradise for disciples of Nimrod and of Izaak Walton, and a blessed sanitarium for Americans, most of whom under skies less gray than yours do their daily work with little if any reserve vitality.”

Gertrude, who had excused herself some minutes before, now returned.  She had been visiting in an adjoining Pullman a friend of hers, whom she had met for a moment in the Grand Central Station before the train started.  Calling Colonel Harris aside, she said, “Father, Mrs. Nellie Eastlake, my classmate at Smith College, is going with friends to the Pacific Coast; shall I ask her to dine with us?”