The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862, page 99 by Various Authors
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fancy them just as high as we wished them. The air was as soft as in the early days of September, and our steeds very considerately lingered, thus prolonging our pleasure, so that we came into the Glen-House with keen appetites, a needful blessing, we thought, when Mr. Thompson, its host, said: 'We are not prepared for company in October, and I don't know that we shall find any thing but pork and beans to give you!' My father looked blank, and blanker yet when we were ushered into a parlor where, instead of finding the crackling wood-fire that we had fancied indigenous in these mountains, there was one of those frightful black stoves that have expelled from our life all the poetry of the hearthstone--but, courage, we can open the stove-door, and see a sparkle of light and life.
10 P.M.--Before bidding you good night, dear Sue, I must tell you 'pour encourager les autres' who may come after us that our scrupulous host performed so much better than he promised, that when we were summoned to our dinner it was served in a cosy little room, as neatly as a home dinner, and hot, which a hotel meal, in the season, never is, and that the ghost of the pork and beans which had terrified us, was exorcised by actual tender chickens, fresh eggs, and plentiful accessories of vegetables and pies; and our man, William, the driver, was converted into a waiter, doing his part as if he were 'native to the manner.'
[N.B.--Our old friend's memorandum was scanty, and so we publish but a small extract from it. We smile at his infirmities--more in love than ridicule--and are not fond of proclaiming them, and only do so in this brief extract to justify our assertion that his traveling temper reminded us of English tourists, who would seem to make it a point to turn their plates bottom-side upward. The father's and daughter's records of the same scenes are both true. The one is the right, the other the wrong side of the tapestry. Strange, that any eye should make the fatal mistake of looking at the last rather than t