Footing it in Franconia

“There did they dwell, As happy spirits as were ever seen; If but a bird, to keep them company, Or butterfly sate down, they were, I ween, As pleased as if the same had been a M...

The thrushes had followed him. It was he, and not a human intruder, to whom they had been addressing themselves. Soon the owl flew a little further away (it was wonderful how la...

Beyond this lonely barn the soil of the valley becomes drier and sandier. Here are two or three houses, with broad hayfields about them, in which live many vesper sparrows. No d...

I left the Littleton road for the road to the Streeter neighborhood, crossed Gale River by a bridge pitched with much labor at a great height above it (a good indication of the...

Then, as I pass the height of land and begin the gentle descent into the Notch, fronting the white peak of Lafayette and the black face of Eagle Cliff, I am aware of a strange s...

My spring vacation was planned to be botanical rather than ornithological; but we are not the masters of our own fate, though we sometimes try to think so, and my sketch is turn...

The brightest and prettiest thing here, however, was not a flower, but a bird; a Blackburnian warbler fluttering along before me in the low bushes--an extraordinary act of grace...

One of my pleasures of the milder sort was to sit on the piazza before breakfast (the lateness of the White Mountain breakfast hour being one of a walking man’s _dis_pleasures)...

We were four at table, and in front of the evening fireplace, but in footing it we were only two. Sometimes we walked side by side; sometimes we were rods apart. When we felt li...

As for the quality and manner of the song, with all my listening and studying I could never hit upon a word with which to characterize it. The tone is dry, guttural, inexpressiv...

Meanwhile, it had put its head partly out of sight in the top of the chimney, as if it had a nest there and were feeding its young. Then of a sudden it took wing, but in a minut...

The men who live in such houses, the keeper tells me, are very wide-awake and well informed, reading their weekly newspaper with thoroughness, and always ready for rational talk...