miners, as you see them in the illustrations to Bret Harte's stories. Through this landscape, roughly blocked out, and covered still with Nature's chips and shavings,and seeming for that very reason singularly fresh and close to her mighty hand,—we fly for twenty miles. We are still ascending, and the true apex of our path is only reached at the twentieth. This was the climax which poet Willis came out to reach in a spirit of intense curiosity, intent to peer over and see what was on the other side of the mountains, and with some idea, as he says, of hanging his hat on the evening star. His disgust, as a bard, when he found that the highest point was only named "Cranberry Summit," was sublime.

"Willis was particularly struck," said the landlord of the Glades Hotel, "with a quality of whiskey we had hereabouts at the time of his visit. In those days, before the revenue, an article of rich corn whiskey was made in small quantities by these Maryland farmers. Mr. Willis found it agree with him particularly well, for it's as pure as water, and slips through your teeth like flaxseed tea. I explained to him how it gained in quality by being kept a few years, becoming like noble old brandy. Mr. Willis. was fired with the idea, and took a barrel along home with him, in the ambitious intention of ripening it. In less than six months," pursued the Boniface, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, "he sent for another barrel."

The region where we now find ourselves among these mountain-tops is known as the Glades, a range of elevated plateau marked with all the signs of a high latitude, but flat enough to be spread with occasional patches of discouraged farms. The streams make their way into the Youghiogheny, and so into the Ohio and Gulf of Mexico, for we have mounted the great water-shed, and have long ago crossed both branches of the sun-seeking Potomac!

We are in a region that particularly justifies the claim of the locomotive to be the great discoverer of hidden retreats, for never will you come upon a place more obviously disconcerted at being found out. The screams of the whistle day by day have inserted no modern ideas into this mountain-cranium, which, like Lord John Russell's, must be trepanned before it can be enlightened. The Glades are sacred to deer, bears, trout. But the fatal rails guide to them an unceasing procession of staring citizens, and they are filled in the fine season with visitors from Cincinnati and Baltimore.

THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

CHARLES HEBER CLARK.

[The author of the selection here given is known in literature under the odd pseudonyme of "Max Adeler." His writings are all of a humorous cast, and, while they perhaps are apt to "carry the joke too far," they are often full of the true spirit of fun. The extract given below is from the story of " An Old Fogy" in "The Fortunate Island.” The true position in which we should all find ourselves if we were suddenly taken back to those "good old times" whose loss many still deplore is here very amusingly paraphrased.]

"THE good old times! And the old times were good, my dear; better, much better, than the times that you live in. I know I am an old fogy, Nelly," said Ephraim Batterby, refilling his pipe, and looking at his granddaughter, who sat with him in front of the fire, with her head bending over her sewing; "I know I am an old fogy, and I glory in it."

"But you never will be for me, grandpa," said Nelly, glancing at him with a smile.

"Yes, my dear, I am for everybody. I am a man of the past. Everything I ever cared for and ever loved, excepting you, belongs to the years that have gone, and my affections belong to those years. I liked the people of the old time better than I do those of the new.

I loved their simpler ways, the ways that I knew in my boyhood, threescore and more years ago. I am sure the world is not so good as it was then. It is smarter, perhaps; it knows more, but its wisdom vexes and disgusts me. I am not certain, my dear, that, if I had my way, I would not sweep away, at one stroke, all the so-called 'modern conveniences,' and return to the ancient methods."

They were very slow, grandpa."

"Yes, slow; and for that I liked them. We go too fast now; but our speed, I am afraid, is hurrying us in the wrong direction. We were satisfied in the old time with what we had. It was good enough. Are men contented now? No; they are still improving and improving; still reaching out for something that will be quicker, or easier, or cheaper than the things that are. We appear to have gained much; but really we have gained nothing. We are not a bit better off now than we were; not so well off, in my opinion."

"But, grandpa, you must remember that you were young then, and perhaps looked at the world in a more hopeful way than you do now."

"Yes, I allow for that, Nelly, I allow for that; I don't deceive myself. My youth does not seem so very far off that I cannot remember it distinctly. I judge the time fairly, now in my old age, as I judge the present time, and my assured opinion is that it was superior in its way, its life, and its people. Its people! Ah, Nelly, my dear, there were three persons in that past who alone would consecrate it to me. I am afraid there are not many women

now like your mother and mine, and like my dear wife, whom you never saw. It seems to me, my child, that I would willingly live all my life over again, with its strifes and sorrows, if I could clasp again the hand of one of those angelic women, and hear a word from her sweet lips."

As the old man wiped the gathering moisture from his eyes, Nelly remained silent, choosing not to disturb the revery into which he had fallen. Presently Ephraim rose abruptly, and said, with a smile,—

"Come, Nelly, dear, I guess it is time to go to bed. I must be up very early to-morrow morning."

"At what hour do you want breakfast, grandpa ?"

Why, too soon for you, you sleepy puss. I shall breakfast by myself before you are up, or else I shall breakfast down town. I have a huge cargo of wheat in from Chicago, and I must arrange to have it shipped for Liverpool. There is one thing that remains to me from the old time, and that is some of the hard work of my youth; but even that seems a little harder than it used to. So, come now;

to bed! to bed!"

While he was undressing, and long after he had crept beneath the blankets, Ephraim's thoughts wandered back and back through the spent years; and, as the happiness he had known came freshly and strongly into his mind, he felt drawn more and more towards it, until the new and old mingled together in strange but placid confusion in his brain, and he fell asleep.

When he awoke it was still dark, for the winter was just begun; but he heard-or did he only dream that he heard?-a clock in some neighboring steeple strike sir? He knew that he must get up, for his business upon that day demanded early attention.

He sat up in bed, yawned, stretched his arms once or

twice, and then, flinging the covering aside, he leaped to the floor. He fell, and hurt his arm somewhat. Strange that he should have miscalculated the distance! The bed seemed more than twice as high from the floor as it should be. It was too dark to see distinctly, so he crept to the bed with extended hands, and felt it. Yes, it was at least four feet from the floor, and, very oddly, it had long, slim posts, such as bedsteads used to have, instead of the low, carved foot-board, and the high, postless head-board, which belonged to the bedstead upon which he had slept in recent years. Ephraim resolved to strike a light. He groped his way to the table, and tried to find the match-box. It was not there; he could not discover it upon the bureau either. But he found something else, which he did not recognize at first, but which a more careful examination with his fingers told him was a flint and steel. He was vexed that any one should play such a trick upon him. How could he ever succeed in lighting the gas with a flint and steel?

But he resolved to try, and he moved over towards the gas-bracket by the bureau. It was not there! He passed his cold hand over a square yard of the wall, where the bracket used to be, but it had vanished. It actually seemed, too, as if there was no paper on the wall, for the whitewash scaled off beneath his fingers.

Perplexed and angry, Ephraim was about to replace the flint and steel upon the bureau, and to dress in the dark, when his hand encountered a candlestick. It contained a He struck the

candle. He determined to try to light it. flint upon the steel at least a dozen times, in the way he remembered doing so often when he was a boy, but the sparks refused to catch the tinder. He struck again and again, until he became really warm with effort and indignation, and at last he succeeded.