fame with that delightful forest region, and whose description of its finest waterfall was published in this very magazine a dozen years ago. He it was who had laid out with artistic taste "The Philosopher's Camp," and who was that season still awaiting philosophers as well as deer. He had been there for a month, alone with the guides, and declared that Nature was pressing upon him to an extent that almost drove him wild. His eyes had a certain remote and questioning look that belongs to imaginative men who dwell alone. It seemed an impertinence to ask him to come out of his dream and offer us dinner; but his instincts of hospitality failed not, and the redshirted guide was sent to the camp, which was, it seemed, on the other side of the lake, to prepare our meal, while we bathed. I am thus particular in speaking of the dinner, not only because such is the custom of travellers, but also because it was the occasion of an interlude which I shall never forget. As we were disrobing for our bath upon the lonely island, where the soft pale water almost lapped our feet, and the deep, wooded hills made a great amphitheatre for the lake, our host bethought himself of something neglected in his instructions.

"Ben!" vociferated he to the guide, now rapidly receding. Ben paused on his oars.

"Remember to bo-o-oil the venison, Ben," shouted the pensive artist, while all the slumbering echoes arose to applaud this culinary confidence.

"And, Ben!" he added, imploringly, "don't forget the dumplings! Upon this, the loons, all down the lake, who had hitherto been silent, took up the strain with vehemence, hurling their wild laughter at the presumptuous mortal who thus dared to invade their solitudes with details as trivial as Mr. Pickwick's tomato-sauce. They repeated it over and over to each other, till ten square miles of loons must have heard the news, and all laughed together; never was there such an audience; they could not get

over it, and two hours after, when we had rowed over to the camp and dinner was served, this irreverent and invisible chorus kept bursting out, at all points of the compass, with scattered chuckles of delight over this extraordinary bill of fare. Justice compels me to add that the dumplings were made of Indian-meal, upon a receipt devised by our artist; the guests preferred the venison, but the host showed a fidelity to his invention that proved him to be indeed a dweller in an ideal world.

Another path that comes back to memory is the bare trail that we followed over the prairies of Nebraska, in 1856, when the Missouri River was held by roving bands from the Slave States, and Freedom had to seek an overland route into Kansas. All day and all night we rode between distant prairie - fires, pillars of evening light and of morning cloud, while sometimes the low grass would burn to the very edge of the trail, so that we had to hold our breath as we galloped through. Parties of armed Missourians were sometimes seen over the prairie swells, so that we had to mount guard at nightfall; Free-State emigrants, fleeing from persecution, continually met us; and we sometimes saw parties of wandering Sioux, or passed their great irregular huts and houses of worship. I remember one desolate prairie summit on which an Indian boy sat motionless on horseback; his bare red legs clung closely to the white sides of his horse; a gorgeous sunset was unrolled behind him, and he might have seemed the last of his race, just departing for the hunting-grounds of the blest. More often the horizon showed no human outline; and the sun set cloudless, as behind ocean-waves, wavering and elongated into pear-shaped outlines. But I remember best the excitement that filled our breasts when we approached spots where the contest for a free soil had already been sealed with blood. those days, as one went to Pennsylvania to study coal formations or to Lake Superior for copper, so one went to

In

Kansas for men. "Every footpath on this planet," said a rare thinker, "may lead to the door of a hero," and that trail into Kansas ended rightly at the tent-door of John Brown.

And later, who that knew them can forget the picket-paths that were worn throughout the Sea Islands of South Carolina, paths that wound along the shores of creeks or through the depths of woods, where the great wild roses tossed their airy festoons above your head, and the brilliant lizards glanced across your track, and your horse's ears suddenly pointed forward and his pace grew uneasy as he snuffed the presence of something you could not see. At night you had often to ride from picket to picket in dense darkness, trusting to the horse to find his way, or sometimes dismounting to feel with your hands for the track, while the great Southern fireflies seemed to offer their floating lanterns for guidance, and the hoarse "Chuck-will'swidow" croaked ominously from the trees, and the great guns of the siege of Charleston throbbed more faintly than the drumming of a partridge, from far away. Those islands are everywhere so intersected by dikes and ledges and winding creeks as to form a natural military region, like La Vendée; and yet two plantations that are twenty miles asunder by the road will sometimes be united by a footpath which a negro can traverse in two hours. These tracks are limited in distance by the island formation, but they assume a greater importance as you penetrate the mainland; they then join great States instead of mere plantations, and if you ask whither one of them leads, you are told "To Alabama," or "To Tennessee."

Time would fail to tell of that wandering path which leads to the Mine Mountain near Brattleborough, where you climb the high peak at last, and perhaps see the showers come up the Connecticut till they patter on the leaves beneath you, and then, swerving, pass up the black ravine and leave you unwet. Or, of those among the White

Mountains, gorgeous with great red lilies which presently seem to take flight in a cloud of butterflies that match their tints; paths where the balsamic air caresses you in light breezes, and masses of alder-berries rise above the waving ferns. Or of the paths that lead beside many a little New England stream, whose bank is lost to sight in a smooth green slope of grape-vine: the lower shoots rest upon the quiet water, but the upper masses are crowned by a white wreath of alder-blooms; - beside them grow great masses of wild roses, and the simultaneous blossoms and berries of the gaudy nightshade. Or of those winding tracks that lead here and there among the flat stones of peaceful old graveyards, so entwined with grass and flowers that every spray of sweetbrier seems to tell more of life than all the accumulated epitaphs of death.

or the weary tracks by which "Little Nell" wandered; or the haunted way in Sydney Dobell's ballad,

"Ravelstone, Ravelstone,

The merry path that leads Down the golden morning hills, And through the silver meads"; or the few American paths that genius has yet idealized; that where Hawthorne's "David Swan" slept, or that which Thoreau found upon the banks of Walden Pond, or where Whittier parted with his childhood's playmate on Ramoth Hill. It is not heights, nor depths, nor spaces that make the

ONE of our most favorite legendary

resorts was the old barn.

Sam Lawson preferred it on many accounts. It was quiet and retired, that is to say, at such distance from his own house that he could not hear if Hepsy called ever so loudly, and farther off than it would be convenient for that industrious and painstaking woman to follow him. Then there was the soft fragrant cushion of hay, on which his length of limb could be easily bestowed.

Our barn had an upper loft with a swinging outer door that commanded a view of the old mill, the waterfall, and the distant windings of the river, with its grassy green banks, its graceful elm draperies, and its white flocks of waterlilies; and then on this Saturday afternoon we had Sam all to ourselves. It was a drowsy, dreamy October day, when the hens were lazily "craw, crawing," in a soft, conversational undertone with each other, as they scratched and picked the hay - seed under the barn windows. Below in the barn black Cæsar sat quietly hatchelling flax, sometimes gurgling and giggling to himself with an overflow of that interior jollity with which he seemed to be always full. The African in New England was a curious contrast to everybody around him in the joy and satisfaction that he seemed to feel in the mere fact of being alive. Every white person was glad or sorry for some appreciable cause in the past, present, or future, which was capable of being definitely stated; but black Cæsar was in an eternal giggle and frizzle and simmer of enjoyment for which he could give no earthly reason: he was an "embodied joy," like Shelley's skylark.

"Jest hear him," said Sam Lawson looking pensively over the hay-mow

and strewing hayseed down on his wool. "How that are crittur seems to tickle and laugh all the while 'bout nothin'. Lordy massy, he don't seem never to consider that this life's a dream, an empty show.'"

"Look here, Sam," we broke in, anxious to cut short a threatened stream of morality, "you promised to tell us about Captain Kidd and how you dug for his money.”

"Did I now? Wal, boys, that are history o' Kidd's is a warnin' to fellers. Why, Kidd had pious parents and Bible and sanctuary privileges when he was a boy, and yet come to be hanged. It's all in this 'ere song I 'm a goin' to sing ye. Lordy massy, I wish I had my bass-viol now. Cæsar," he said, calling down from his perch, "can't you strike the pitch o' 'Cap'n Kidd' on your fiddle?"

Cæsar's fiddle was never far from him. It was, in fact, tucked away in a nice little nook just over the manger, and he often caught an interval from his work to scrape a dancing-tune on it, keeping time with his heels, to our great delight.

A most wailing minor-keyed tune was doled forth, which seemed quite refreshing to Sam's pathetic vein, as he sang in his most lugubrious tones:

"My name was Robert Kidd
As I sailed, as I sailed,
My name was Robert Kidd ;
God's laws I did forbid,
And so wickedly I did,

As I sailed, as I sailed.'

"Now ye see, boys, he's a goin' to tell how he abused his religious privileges; just hear now:

"My father taught me well,
As I sailed, as I sailed;
My father taught me well,
To shun the gates of hell,
But yet I did rebel,

As I sailed, as I sailed.
"He put a Bible in my hand
As I sailed, as I sailed;

n't they get it?" we both asked eagerly and in one breath.

"Why, Lordy massy, boys, your questions tumbles over each other thick as martins out o' a martin-box. Now you jist be moderate and let alone, and I'll tell you all about it from the beginnin' to the end. I did n't railly have no hand in 't, though I was knowin' to 't, as I be to most things that goes on round here, but my conscience would n't railly a let me start on no sich undertakin'.

"Wal, the one that fust sot the thing a goin' was old Mother Hokum, that used to live up in that little tumbledown shed by the cranberry-pond up beyond the spring pastur'. They had a putty bad name them Hokums. How they got a livin' nobody knew, for they did n't seem to pay no attention to raisin' nothin' but childun, but the deuce knows there was plenty o' them. Their old hut was like a rabbit-pen, there was a tow head to every crack and cranny. 'Member what old Cæsar

"Wal, he was an officer in the British navy, and he got to being a pirate, used to take ships and sink 'em, and murder the folks; and so they say he got no end o' money; gold and silver and precious stones as many as the wise men in the East. But ye see, what good did it all do him? He could n't use it and dars'n't keep it, so he used to bury it in spots round here and there in the awfullest heathen way ye ever heard of. Why, they say he allers used to kill one or two men or women or children of his prisoners and bury with it, so that their sperits might keep watch on it ef anybody was to dig arter it. That are thing has been tried and tried and tried, but no man nor mother's son on 'em ever got a cent that dug. 'T was tried here 'n Oldtown, and they come pretty nigh gettin' on 't, but it gin 'em the slip. Ye see, boys, it's the Devil's money, and he holds a pretty tight grip on 't."

"Wal, how was it about digging for it? Tell us, did you do it? Were you there? Did you see it? And why could

store that old Hokum had got twins. 'S'pose de Lord know best,' says Cæsar, but I thought dere was Hokums enough afore.' Wal, even poor workin' industrious folks like me finds it's hard gettin' along when there's so many mouths to feed. Lordy massy, there don't never seem to be no end on 't, and so it ain't wonderful, come to think on 't, ef folks like them Hokums gets tempted to help along in ways that ain't quite right. Anyhow folks did use to think that old Hokum was too sort o' familiar with their wood-piles 'long in the night, though they could n't never prove it on him; and when Mother Hokum come to houses round to wash, folks use sometimes to miss pieces, here and there, though they never could find 'em on her; then they was allers a gettin' in debt here and a gettin' in debt there. Why, they got to owin' two dollars to Joe Gidger for butcher's meat. Joe was sort o' good-natured and let 'em have meat, 'cause Hokum he promised so fair to pay, but he could n't never get it out o' him. 'Member once Joe walked clear