To the regular ferrage, Gertrude added a dime for Tim, the helper, who watered the horses.  As George was about to start his team, a twelve-year old farm boy ran aboard the boat with a string of fine speckled trout strung on a willow twig.  All the spring the boy’s anticipations for “a day off” had now been fully realized.  Since daylight the little fellow had tramped up and down the brook, his feet were bruised and sore, and his face and hands were bitten by mosquitos.  But what of that?  He had caught a string of fine fish and was happy.  Gertrude, for a silver dollar, bought the trout, and the boy danced with joy.

It was half past eleven before the Half-way Station up the mountain was reached, and the steep ascent to Prospect House on the top of Mt.  Holyoke was made by the car on the inclined railway.  The morning ride and the thought of a dinner of brook trout on the mountain had sharpened the appetites of the lovers.  George and Gertrude needed but a single announcement of dinner from the clerk to make them hasten for seats at so inviting a meal.  They sat near an open window, and never did they enjoy a dinner more.  College work was now over, and on the threshold of life, apart from the busy world in sight below, two souls could plan and confide in each other.  As the two walked the broad porch, a panorama unfolded before them of almost unsurpassed beauty.

Charles Sumner who, in 1847, stood on Mt.  Holyoke, said, “I have never seen anything so unsurpassingly lovely as this.”  He had traveled through the Highlands of Scotland, up and down the Rhine, had ascended Mont Blanc, and stood on the Campagna in Rome.  Gertrude with her college mates had often climbed Mt.  Holyoke, and she was very familiar with this masterpiece of nature in western Massachusetts.  So she described the grand landscape to her lover who sat enchanted with the scene before him.

“This alluvial basin,” she said, “is twenty miles in length and fifteen in width, and is enclosed by the Mt.  Holyoke and Mt.  Tom ranges, and the abrupt cones of Toby and Sugar Loaf, while the Green Mountains lie to the north, whence the rich soils have been brought by thousands of vernal floods.  Grove-like masses of elms mark well the townships of Northampton, Easthampton, Southampton and Westhampton, Hatfield, Williamsburg and Whately, Hadley, Amherst, Leverett and Sunderland.

“In twelve miles, the Connecticut River turns four times to the east and three times to the west, forming the famous ‘Ox-Bow.’

“This beautiful river receives its life from springs in adjacent forests and mountains, and, forcing a passage between Mt.  Holyoke and Mt.  Nonotuck, flows far south into Long Island Sound.  Its banks are fringed with a tanglewood of willows, shrubs, trees, and clambering vines.  Bordering on the Connecticut River and near thrifty towns are thousands of acres of rich meadows and arable lands, without fence, which are interspersed with lofty trees and orchards and covered with exquisite verdure.