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: for then the delight of the contrast is all the greater. The sociable and cozy pines and spruces stand out against the snowy hills in fine relief, and there is an invitation all its own in the wood-fire smoke curling from the chimneys. Up on the Western Promenade in staid, sedate, and delightful old Portland, stands a little cast-iron negro boy whose slavery was unaffected by Lincoln's Proclamation. Before the war, and night and day since the war, he has served his masters in the capacity of hitch- ing-post on the curb in front of one of Maine's finest residences, not far from the statue of the great Reed. I remember, years ago, seeing a little Southern child, for the first time in the North, and far away from home, run up and kiss the shining iron cheek, a rather touching scene of childish ecstasy and loyalty. I have much the same feeling for any scrubby little spruce, wherever and whenever I find it. Banked on the northwest by that magnificent Presidential Range, snow-tipped from early October to May, bounded on the southeast by the deep, cool waters of the Atlantic, Maine has the most stimulating climate of any State in the Union. One can see Mount Washington from some point in half the towns of the State. Sir George Weymouth, and other early voyagers to the Maine coast in the seventeenth century, speak in their records of seeing these mountains from Monhegan. Members of the Maine Historical Society were in debate many years as to whether or not they could really have seen the White Mountains from this island so far out at sea, quite a hundred miles to the nearest peak as the bird flies. Finally, Dr. Henry S. Burrage, an officer of the Society, went to Monhegan, and, waiting for an exceptionally clear day, saw Mount Washington without the aid of a glass, verified the ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.