Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: those glowing features which I have so nobly depicted. As the result, our coffee trays continue to come in at nine, and when we are quite ready we go on. I was awakened this next morning by a curious sound, which I could liken only to large bullfrogs jumping into a pond, with their croak eliminated. It happened at irregular intervals, yet was so persistent that I made a sleepy way to the window to study the phenomena. The bull-frogs were an extraordinary size— for frogs—but mere pigmies as human beings. They were the four children of our host plunging in and out of the pool with a lack of vocalisation, out of respect for their sleeping elders, which could have been accomplished only by severe training. I had never believed it possible before to drop into a body of water larger than a bathtub without a shriek, either of pleasure or misery, and, as there were bathing suits in the guest rooms, I shortly found out for myself that it could not be done by those out of their " teens." My cries soon brought out the grown-ups of the household in self-defence, and there was so much high diving and drowning and rescuing that we all made as late a breakfast as W could desire. After this came packing up, and " descending the baggage," as the French put it, and forgetting the hatbox, and going back for it, so that it was almost noon of an intensely hot day before we continued over the new state road in the direction of the Berkshires. Westchester County is very proud of this perfect strip of going, as the entire state will be when it is completed. It cost twenty thousand dollars a mile, and the richest man in the county will speak of this with bated breath. He ought to— he is taxed for it. The optimist will travel over the road in complete enjoyment, but I found mysel...