to traverse every wood we fancied. We were then in a strong vehicle called a lumber wagon which defied all the jolts and wrenches incident to wood paths, mud holes, and the fording of creeks; we were driven by a friend, who drove admirably, who had the true spirit which animates daily life, who knew the habits of all the fowl, and fish, and growing things, and all the war-like legends of the country, and could recite them, not in a pedantical, but in a poetical manner; thus our whole journey had the gayety of adventure, with the repose of intimate communion. Now we were in a nice carriage, fit for nothing but roads, and which would break even on those, with a regular driver, too careful of his horses to go off a foot-pace, etc., etc.
“However, we had much pleasure and saw many pretty things, of which I must tell you at my leisure. Our time was chiefly passed in the neighborhood of a chain of lakes, fine pieces of water, with the wide sloping park-like banks, so common in this country.”[1]
“Summer on the Lakes” was prepared for the press after her return, with the aid of a good deal of study at the Harvard College Library; where I can well remember to have seen Miss Fuller sitting, day after day, under the covert gaze of the undergraduates who had never before looked upon a woman reading within those sacred precincts, where twenty of that sex are now employed as assistants. She was correcting the press during much of the spring of 1844, when the proof-sheets came in every evening. “I expect it at night,” she writes, “as one might some old guardian.”
- ↑ MS.
