The Toe River, even here, where it bears westward, is a very respectable stream in size, and not to be trifled with after a shower.  It gradually turns northward, and, joining the Nollechucky, becomes part of the Tennessee system.  We crossed it by a long, diagonal ford, slipping and sliding about on the round stones, and began the ascent of a steep hill.  The sun beat down unmercifully, the way was stony, and the horses did not relish the weary climbing.  The Professor, who led the way, not for the sake of leadership, but to be the discoverer of laden blackberry bushes, which began to offer occasional refreshment, discouraged by the inhospitable road and perhaps oppressed by the moral backwardness of things in general, cried out: 

  “Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,—­
   As, to behold desert a beggar born,
   And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
   And purest faith unhappily foresworn,
   And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
   And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
   And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
   And strength by limping sway disabled,
   And art made tongue-tied by authority,
   And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
   And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
   And captive good attending captain ill: 
   Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
   Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.”

In the midst of a lively discussion of this pessimistic view of the inequalities of life, in which desert and capacity are so often put at disadvantage by birth in beggarly conditions, and brazen assumption raises the dust from its chariot wheels for modest merit to plod along in, the Professor swung himself off his horse to attack a blackberry bush, and the Friend, representing simple truth, and desirous of getting a wider prospect, urged his horse up the hill.  At the top he encountered a stranger, on a sorrel horse, with whom he entered into conversation and extracted all the discouragement the man had as to the road to Burnsville.

Nevertheless, the view opened finely and extensively.  There are few exhilarations comparable to that of riding or walking along a high ridge, and the spirits of the traveler rose many degrees above the point of restful death, for which the Professor was crying when he encountered the blackberry bushes.  Luckily the Friend soon fell in with a like temptation, and dismounted.  He discovered something that spoiled his appetite for berries.  His coat, strapped on behind the saddle, had worked loose, the pocket was open, and the pocket-book was gone.  This was serious business.  For while the Professor was the cashier, and traveled like a Rothschild, with large drafts, the Friend represented the sub-treasury.  That very morning, in response to inquiry as to the sinews of travel, the Friend had displayed, without counting, a roll of bills.  These bills had now disappeared, and when the Friend turned back to communicate his loss, in the character of needy nothing not trimm’d in jollity, he had a sympathetic listener to the tale of woe.