It was the condensed smoke of the chimneys, with the condensed, exhaled breath of the villagers, prevented from dispersion by the imprisoning hills.

Afar, over a distant village lying in a bay of the plain formed by the mountains, there rested a great flat canopy of haze, like a pall. Low down, here and there, shreds of vapor listlessly wandered in the air, like abandoned or helmless nations or ships-or very soaky towels hung on criss-cross clothes-lines to dry.

Along the base of one long range of heights ran a lagging, fever-and-agueish river, over which was a duplicate stream of dripping mist, exactly corresponding in every meander with its parent water below. I sat down for a moment on a great rotting log nigh the top of the hill, my back to a heavy grove, my face presented toward a wide sweeping circuit of mountains enclosing a rolling, diversified country. The woods were strewn with dry dead boughs, snapped off by the riotous winds of March, while the young trees skirting the woods were just beginning to show the first yellowish tinge of the nascent spray. In the low wet swales the verdure peeped out in vivid green beyond, on the mountains, lay light patches of snow, strangely relieved against their russet sides all the humped hills looked like brindled kine in the shivers. The old grass and the new grass were striving together. I marked the fact, but only grinned at it with a ghastly grin.Īll round me were tokens of a divided empire. This toiling posture brought my head pretty well earthward, as if I were in the act of butting it against the world.

I buttoned out this squitchy air as well as I could with my lean, double-breasted dress-coat-my overcoat being so long-skirted I only used it in my wagon-and spitefully thrusting my crab-stick into the oozy sod, bent my blue form to the steep ascent of the hill. The country looked underdone, its raw juices squirting out all round. It was a cool and misty, damp, disagreeable air.

In all parts of the world many high-spirited revolts from rascally despotisms had of late been knocked on the head many dreadful casualties, by locomotive and steamer, had likewise knocked hundreds of high-spirited travelers on the head ( I lost a dear friend in one of them) my own private affairs were also full of despotisms, casualties, and knockings on the head, when early one morning in spring, being too full of hypoes to sleep, I sallied out to walk on my hillside pasture.

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