_Saturday Evening._--We have driven some twenty-three miles--from the Mountain Notch to the Franconian Notch--to-day; the weather has been delicious. The drive has been more prosaic, more commonplace, or approaching to it, than we have before traveled in this hill country. This October coloring would make far tamer scenery beautiful, but I can fancy it very bleak and dismal when 'blow, blow November's winds,' whereas here, at the Franconian Notch, you feel as it were housed and secured by nature's vast fortresses and defences. The 'Eagle's Cliff' is on one side of you, and Mount Cannon (called so from a resemblance of a rock on the summit to a cannon) on the other, and they so closely fold and wall you in, that you need but a poetic stretch of the arms to touch them with either hand; and when the sun glides over the arch in the zenith above--but a four hours' visible course in mid-winter--you might fancy yourself sheltered from the sin and sorrow that great Eye witnesseth.
You will accuse me, I know, dear, rational friend, of being '_exalté_,' (vernacular, cracked,) but remember, we are alone in these inspiring solitudes, free from the disenchantment of the eternal buzzing and swarming of the summer-troops that the North gives up, and the South keeps not back.
We were received at the Profile House with a most smiling welcome by Mr. Weeks, the _pro tem._ host, who promises to make us 'as comfortable as is in his power,' and is substantiating his promise by transferring his dinner-table from the long, uncarpeted dinner-saloon with its fearful rows of bare chairs and tables, to a well-furnished, home-looking apartment, where a fire-place worthy of the middle ages, is already brightened with a hospitable fire. The great rambling hotel is vacant, and its silence unbroken, save by the hastening to and fro of our willing host, who unites all offices of service in his own person, and the pattering of his pretty little boy's feet--the little fellow following him like his shadow, and, perchance, running away from other shadows in this great empty house. The little fellow makes music to my ear; there is no pleasanter sound than the footsteps of a child.
I left Alice dressing for dinner--I think Alice would perform the ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked on a desert island--and my father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at these seasons, when 'time stands still withal,' or rather, to him, keeps a snail's fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down to the lake, a short walk, to greet the 'Old Man of the Mountain,' as they prosaically call the wonderful head at the very summit of the Headland Cliff, upreared on high over the beautiful bit of water named 'The Old Man's Punch-bowl.' The nomenclature of our country certainly does not indicate one particle of poetry or taste in its people. There are, to be sure, namesakes of the old world which intimate the exile's loving memories, and there are scattered, here and there, euphonious and significant Indian names, not yet superseded by Brownvilles or Smithdales, but for the most part, one would infer that pedagogues, sophomores, and boors, had presided at the baptismal-font of the land. To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline, like the Sphynx, a mystery in the desert--to call it the Old Man of the Mountain, is irreverence, desecration! I and this exquisite little lake, lapped amid the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose 'million unseen spirits' may do the bidding of that heroic old Prospero who presides over it--to call this gem of the forest a 'Punch-bowl,' is a sorry travesty. I paid my homage to him while his profile cut the glowing twilight, and then sat down at the brim of the lake.