From one side they looked up the river along
the face of the great ledges, and caught the grandeur of far-off
Washington, Adams, and Madison, filling up the northward end of the long
valley. The aspect of the other was toward the frowning glooms of
Giant's Cairn close by, and broadened then down over the pleasant
subsidence of the southern country to where the hills grew less, and
fair, small, modest peaks lifted themselves just into blue height and
nothing more, smiling back with a contented deference toward the
mightier majesties, as those who might say: "We do our gentle best; it
is not yours; yet we, too, are mountains, though but little ones." From
underneath spread the foreground of green, brilliant intervale, with
the river flashing down between margins of sand and pebbles in the
midst.
Here they put Leslie Goldthwaite; and here, somehow, her first
sensation, as she threw back her blinds to let in all the twilight for
her dressing, was a feeling of half relief from the strained awe and
wonder of the last few days. Life would not seem so petty here as in the
face of all that other solemn stateliness.
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