abruptly, or sloped easily down to merge with the low hills of the valley. One beyond the other, the spurs pushed themselves out, great buttresses of rock with their shoulders to the plateau's edge. On the nearest, the gorgeous October foliage could be seen in all its beauty. The more distant spurs were veiled with the blue haze of Indian Summer, the tint of each being more intense, until the most remote were low lying clouds of deep silvery blue, encircling the farthermost bounds of the valley and terminating in the two crags that guard the Gap. Like a faint shadow, the distant hills beyond could be seen through the notch. On the edge of the nearest spur perches a great hotel. Across a ravine, on another crest, there is a second hostelry, both deserted now by the flitting crowds. "Life is given to the scene by the flash of sunlight from the water of brooks and trout streams." of the city and town. On our Knob two cottages stand like sentinels overlooking the valley. One of these is haunted, rumor says, and has not been occupied for years. No one has related to me the uncanny tale of the cottage, but I feel sure I could live in peace with the uneasy spirits who haunt the little house, for here on the mountain top, they can be no other than the ghosts of the mist and the whispering wraiths of the breeze. Yellow and gold are the predominating color notes in the Autumn landscape of the mountains. Every shade is there, from a tint that matches the sunshine, to that of rich old gold, all blending into each other in perfect harmony. Laid on this groundwork there are soft daubs of orange, terra cotta tints, russet brown. splotches, glints of red and bright crimson, the deep greens of pines and hemlocks and the purple or dark crimson of the oaks. In gentle undulations, softened by the distance, this magnificent robe of the woods is laid out for our inspection. The courses of tumbling brooks are touched up with emerald by the more frequent hemlocks, and the ravines in which they flow can be traced down the mountains by the shading of green in the masses of brighter color. Off to the Northeast a wide strip of solid gray runs down the slope of a mountain through the glowing foliage. The distance is too great to distinguish what makes this neutral tone in the prevailing high lights of the picture. Perhaps it is a precipitous face of gray rock, so hard and unyielding that the summers and winters of centuries have not softened its surface enough for trees to obtain a foothold. The landscape of the valley is fresher than that of the mountain side, and attractive in its variety, rather than in its masses of color. On the little knolls, the gold note glows. In the lower levels there are large splashes of green foliage which had not felt the touches of frost; brown fields sown to wheat; little emerald squares of pasture; houses and hotels half hidden among the trees. Life is given to the scene by the flash of sunlight from the water of brooks and trout streams. From the path around the edge of the Knob, there is a better view of the nearer part of the valley, lying almost directly below, a picture of contentment. way across to the Gap, the varied hues of the fields and woods are lost in the blue haze which shrouds the details of the distance. This path is sheltered from the wind. It basks in the warmth of the sun, and is an ideal place to loll away an Autumn afternoon. Half At what appears to be the very highest point of the Knob, there is an outcrop of red shale or sandstone, almost level. At one place it has disintegrated and on the broken surface thick grey lichens make a soft carpet. If one of my scientific friends were here he could tell how this outcrop of rock is the end of a stratum rising at an angle from the deep lying foundations of one of the prehistoric ages, but that knowledge would add nothing to my thorough enjoyment of the day and scene. Across a little depression, in the direction of the haunted cottage, a footpath leads to another crest of the Knob. Here is a more interesting geological problem. A number of large rocks, bearing every mark of having been once in a state of fusion, lay here in an irregular group. Their form is regular and some are almost cubical. The edges are rounded and all look as if turned out of some giant mould. Apparently, they are composed of evenly laid and clearly defined strata. Melted in a volcanic blast furnace, the liquid rock, partially cooled and thick, was poured by some old Tubal Cain very slowly into the mould, forming into layers as it spread and hardened. Hammering at a corner with a large stone, I break out a thin piece of the strata, proving to my satisfaction, at least, that these rocks are made of the cooling dregs of the ladle, and left on the crest of the Knob, because perhaps, the giant who made them found that they were imperfect and unsuited for his almost finished labor of upraising the mountain. Ah, now if my scientific friends were here, what a romance they might weave around this isolated group of rocks on the mountain top. Gray Eyes selects a rustic seat on a stone at the sunny side of a clump of vigorous young oaks. As we chat, a blue bird flying over, sends down a musical inquiry, and a robin makes some pleasant comment on our presence. Immense wintergreen berries and a double handfull of huckleberries, which the birds have overlooked, are the refreshments served. I try to trace the course of the river miles away towards the Northeastern rim of the valley. Filling the basin below, I imagine a great glacier, ages ago, its dazzling surface reflecting the sunlight. Then appears a picture of a lake and the Knob is a headland of the shore. The rippling water buries what is now green field and golden robed woodland. Down between the mountain spurs push glaciers, their melting streams feeding the lake. A cataract wears away the barrier at the Gap, and the water uncovers the low hills of the valley. Time slips away and the descending sun of to-day throws shadows down the forest elad mountain slopes. Light of heart it quickly recovered its spirits and went joyfully on toward the Valley of Paradise, B II. THE SPRING IN THE DELL LOWING in big gusts, went the Northwest wind, that October day, tearing the storm clouds to pieces and driving the fragments, like gia it race horses, across a sapphire sky; making great splotches of black shadow on mountainside and valley. We climbel the road, almost to its highest point, breathless and panti ig with the exertion, for the ascent was steep and the gale wis against us. So full of all kinds of health-giving elements wis the air that their odor could be sniffed. The high wind was bouyant with strength. It gave vigor to every step, and each breath was a drink of the purest oxygen, stimulating body and brain. At a point where a ravine started, separating the mountain into two spurs, there turned another road. A short distance from the fork was an apple tree bearing small but nicely tasting fruit. No one missed what was taken, although we filled our pockets, for the tree was bending under the weight of an abundant yield. It was not in anybody's field either, but on the road side of the fence; besides nobody saw us. For these reasons it did not seem wrong to climb the tree and give it a few good shakes. Instinct, however, prompted us to keep an eye on our surroundings. But, somehow, after we had eaten nearly all we could, the fruit did not taste so good as at first. On thinking about it I am almost satisfied that the reason the tree bore so many apples, was because they were so small and common that no self-respecting country boy would touch them. The fact that the tree was not in somebody's orchard might have had something to do with it also, for I recall that apples gathered with the momentary expectation of the appearance of an angry farmer or a dog, always tasted much better than fruit from trees beside the highway. Down the quiet road, through a gallery of autumn tinted trees, we came to a sidepath leading to the spring, situated in a deep ravine. Man's utilitarian hand had been there, and nature was being made to pay tribute to him. Before the intrusion of man, the cool dell must have been most beautiful in its deep seclusion. Where untouched, it bore evidences of having been a favorite spot with the elusive nymphs of the woods and fountains. If any of the nymphs remained when man descended into their retreat with his ugly work tools of iron and steel, how quickly they must have fled from the spot. The never-failing spring was walled in with masonry, confined in a basin; and its overflow ran into a wooden flume leading to a rough board shed, in which was a steel water wheel. The limpid water, unconscious of the degradation, flowed into the buckets of the wheel, which turned by its crystal weight, and then the water being poured out, ran from the back of the dark shed as if in terror. Light of heart, it quickly recovered its spirits, and went joyfully on towards the Valley of Paradise, just as sparkling, just as merrily rippling, as if it had not been made to pay toll to the convenience of mankind. The water wheel drove two pumps, fed by a pipe which tapped the flume, and forced the unwillingly imprisoned water a half mile over the top of the mountain, down to the clustered hotels and cottages. Bubbles of the mysterious gases which underground streams generate, released as the water rushed into the bottom of the basin from its dark channel, ascended to the surface in little spirals and bursting, made ripples whose rings continually crossed and recrossed. I dipped a drink of water from the flume. It was as clear as a mirror, and had no taste or odor of masonry or wood, but it did not satisfy. Imagination could not supply what it lacked, until gazing at the imprisoned spring, there came the comprehension that man's commercial touch had destroyed the water's soul. Up to the road again, to come upon a clump of maple saplings, magnificent in their bizarre Autumn coloring. Never have I seen a more beautiful exhibit of the pigments laid on the woods by the brushes of the frost and the mist. Every little section of tissue, outlined by the ribs of the leaf, had been painted a separate color. Each leaf was different in its striking design. Some were a fantastic patchwork of crimson, pink, yellow, scarlet, rose and green. Others were checkered in light and dark shades. Here the colors blended, there each tint stood out distinct, the leaf ribs mirking the spots. The rarest branches and most beautiful leaves were carried away as trophies of the walk. We returned by a path through the woods, which proved to be a short cut. As we reached the flat crest of the mountain, the boisterous wind, which in the sheltered road had not found us, gave us gusty greeting. By an upland pasture. most unusual sight, bloomed a daisy, just unfolded, as fresh and as perfect as if the month were June, instead of mid-October. A few steps farther on, there was a spray of buttercups, holding up their yellow petals to the descending sun. These bewildered blossoms of the springtime, fragile and delicate, added their dainty grace to the gorgeous flora of the Indian summer. P SCIENCE AND POETRY IN CONFLICT OETRY and Science belong essen tially to different ages. When the world was young, Poetry reigned supreme; now that the world has grown so old and man has become so sufficient, both unto himself and unto all things else, the music of verse, the appeal of the picture language, the charm of the fanciful and the figurative, have no longer any potency. Fact, not fancy; logic, not impulse rule the world and the greater the complications of life, the more involved the systems and methods, of the social, economic and industrial schemes, the more man thinks to exercise his suddenly real ized, supreme intelligence, his imagined capabilities for dealing with things vast and intricate, rather than with things small and individual. In these latter days there has sprung up a class of poet which has tried to accommodate the new order of things and which, in the effort of effecting that accommodation, has elected to exalt and sublimate the wonders of science; the miracles of machinery, etc. This poet finds high lessons and superb figures in such prosaic objects as the locomotive for instance, that puffing, roaring overwhelming monster wrought in steel. Such flights of imagination borne of the strenuous versifier of the new regime, call forth a loud guffaw or silence of contempt from the more aristocratic rhymester whose professional pedigree dates back to classical masters. And then begins the controversy between poet and scientist; and the authority of imagination and music and the spiritual is pitted against the authority of the fact and the commonplace and the material. Darwin, in his autobiography, laments the loss of appreciation for the beauties. and spirit of the nature world. He tells us that, as a boy, he loved poetry, worshipped Nature, and entertained religious aspirations. But close application to the pursuit of truth, tangible and literal, numbed the imagination, put the material form in precedent over the spiritual essence; and music and verse and religion had meaning no more. Thus the universe became a shell composed of atoms; the present was the sole time to consider, the past the sole domain of time to reckon with; the future held no object, for the future was oblivion. Darwin and most of his radical theories are dead, or at least in the process of dying, but the influence of materialism is still alive and lusty in its strength. New prophets have come out of the wildernesses, prophets of the poetic life, prophets of the simple life, but the poetic life and the simple life are as yet infantile projects. This immature condition is probably due to the irreconcilability of simplicity with commercialism; of poetry with iron-clad fact and indisputable reason. Under the rule of to-day's intricacies and mechanisms, faith dies and literature languishes. To live, man must be successful; to be successful, he must be aggressive; to be aggressive, he must be egotistical. Where is the poet of the true meditative type who will fit into this position? Take Keats as an example, picture him in the up-to-date guise of active agent in advertising propaganda,-that frail visionary and dweller in days ancient to whom harsh criticism was as the stripes of a scourge; to whom condemnation was soul crucifixion. Is such a man to be mentioned in a breath with our twentieth century maker of rhymes, who cannot be silenced by whatever methods or forces of denunciation, who is annihilated only to rise, in more exasperating power of literary physique, within the briefest conceivable space of time? It seems, truly, that in the conflict between the purely poetic and the material, which results chiefly from the scientific, the latter has in this present-day the best of the battle. How long it will continue to have that best is a point to consider; it may be that a steady application to the |