to the public for generations, the privilege is never abused by any disgraceful act. The flowers, the trees, the statuary, remain uninjured year after year; it never seems to occur to the most reckless and abandoned to injure them. The general population of those towns is, in many respects, inferior to our own; but in this particular point their tone of civilization rises far above the level of this country.
Friday, 22d.—Still very warm; thermometer 90 in the shade. Although the heat has been greater and more prolonged than usual in this part of the country, still there is a sort of corrective in our highland air which is a great relief; the same degree of the thermometer produces much more suffering in the lower counties, particularly in the towns. Extreme lassitude from the heat is seldom felt here; and our nights are almost always comparatively cool, which is a very great advantage.
Saturday, 23d.—Bright, warm day; thermometer 89. Fine air from the west.
Pleasant walk in the evening. Met a party of children coming from the woods with wild flowers. In May or June, one often meets little people bringing home flowers or berries from the hills; and if you stop to chat with them, they generally offer you a share of their nosegay or their partridge-berries; they are as fond of these last as the birds, and they eat the young aromatic leaves also. Their first trip to the woods, after the snow has gone, is generally in quest of these berries; a week or two later, they go upon the hills for our earliest flowers—ground-laurel and squirrel-cups; a little later, they gather violets, and then again, the azalea, or “wild honeysuckle,” as they call it, to which they are very partial.
