A man of youngish middle age, city born
and raised, had been to school, had travel'd in Europe and California.
I first met him once or twice on the road, and pass'd the time of day,
with some small talk; then, the third time, he ask'd me to go along
a bit and rest in his hut (an almost unprecedented compliment, as I
heard from others afterwards.) He was of Quaker stock, I think; talk'd
with ease and moderate freedom, but did not unbosom his life, or
story, or tragedy, or whatever it was.
AN ULSTER COUNTY WATERFALL
I jot this mem, in a wild scene of woods and hills, where we have come
to visit a waterfall. I never saw finer or more copious hemlocks,
many of them large, some old and hoary. Such a sentiment to them,
secretive, shaggy--what I call weather-beaten and let-alone--a rich
underlay of ferns, yew sprouts and mosses, beginning to be spotted
with the early summer wild-flowers. Enveloping all, the monotone and
liquid gurgle from the hoarse impetuous copious fall--the greenish-
tawny, darkly transparent waters, plunging with velocity down the
rocks, with patches of milk-white foam--a stream of hurrying amber,
thirty feet wide, risen far back in the hills and woods, now rushing
with volume--every hundred rods a fall, and sometimes three or four in
that distance. A primitive forest, druidical, solitary and savage--not
ten visitors a year--broken rocks everywhere--shade overhead, thick
underfoot with leaves--a just palpable wild and delicate aroma.
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