"Glorious!" he cried involuntarily.
Accustomed to the White Mountains, to the Allghenies, he had
wondered if these hills would retain their old-time charm. They
did. He took off his hat to them as he stood there. Richly wooded,
with gently sloping green sides, rising to massive square or
rounded tops with dim vistas, they glowed down upon the squalid
town, gracious, lofty in their greeting, immortal in their vivid and
delicate beauty.
He was a goodly figure of a man as he stood there beside his
valise. Portly, erect, handsomely dressed, and with something
unusually winning in his brown mustache and blue eyes,
something scholarly suggested by the pinch-nose glasses,
something strong in the repose of the head. He smiled as he saw
how unchanged was the grouping of the old loafers on the salt
barrels and nail kegs. He recognized most of them-a little dirtier, a
little more bent, and a little grayer.
They sat in the same attitudes, spat tobacco with the same calm
delight, and joked each other, breaking into short and sudden fits
of laughter, and pounded each other on the back, just as when he
was a student at the La Crosse Seminary and going to and fro daily
on the train.
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