The top of Kearsarge is composed of andalusite schist.  The marks of glacial action are even more distinct than on Cardigan, while the stratification is very curious.  When we reached the top, the first-comers were already busy with surveys, profile sketches and photographs.  As we looked at Cardigan looming up grandly in the northwest, we were proud of our work of the day before.  The view from the two mountains, only twenty miles apart, is of course much the same.  Kearsarge is in exact line with Wauchusct, the Pack Monadnocks and Moosilauke.  These, except the first, could be plainly seen.  Mount Washington, seventy miles distant, Lafayette, Chocorua, Tridyranid, the Twin Mountains, and Franconia Notch formed a sharp, clear picture against the northern sky, and were flanked by scores of smaller mountains.  The green rolling country, flecked by numerous ponds and rivers, stretched away for miles at our feet, to a line of blue, hazy mountains.  The Black-water hills, Sunapee and dozens of other well-known mountains seemed from our standpoint hardly more than good-sized haystacks.  So, perhaps, will our greatest earthly achievements look, when viewed from the heights of eternity.

By noon a blue haze had crept over the horizon and was spreading over the whole landscape.  But we had scored a victory over it by coming early.

  “To have the great poetic heart,
  Is more than all the climber’s art.”

In some sense, we each felt the meaning of the lines, as we turned from Kearsarge top and made the gradual descent.  There is a precipitous bridle-path which shortens the distance in proportion as it increases fatigue.  The majority of us were unwilling to tempt fate by adopting it, and took the easier way.  As we stopped occasionally in a shady nook to rest, we severally confessed that scraps of Lowell’s matchless poem had been floating nebulously in the brain ever since the clouds had disappeared the day before.  Two such days as we had been blessed with are rare, even in June.  Up there in the forest primeval, in the happy shining weather, we were constantly proving that there was

  “Not a leaf or a blade too mean
  To be some happy creature’s palace.”

If we waxed sentimental, something must be forgiven the lavish summer.

At the hotel, the bountiful dinner was garnished with the best of all sauces.  Then, reluctantly indeed after our two days’ tramping, we started for Boston, arriving there a little past seven the same evening.  We had had unprecedented weather, and a well-planned and perfectly executed trip.  Never was there a pleasanter excursion or a more successful outing.  If the path up the hill of life were no more difficult than that up Cardigan!  If all earthly troubles could be as easily surmounted as Kearsarge!  Possibly they might be if we went forth to meet them with the same stout heart and determined spirit.

  “Daily with souls that cringe and plot,
  We Sinais climb and know it not”