And yet there is a fine bracing mountain-air to be drawn from the
material, as with a spigot, if you will only favor your mind with a
digression from the tangible article to the wild-rose associations in
which it is enveloped.
Think of the high, wind-swept ridges, among the clefts of which are
the only homesteads of the hardy pioneers by whose agency alone one
kind of luxury is kept up to the standard demand for it in the great
cities. It might not be so likely a place to get fancy drinks in as
Broome Street, certainly, we must admit, as we picture to ourselves
some brushy ravine in which the trapper has his irons cunningly set
out for the betrayal of the stone-marten and the glossy-backed
"fisher-cat,"--but the breeze in it is quite as wholesome as a
brandy-smash. The whirr of the sage-hen's wing, as she rises from the
fragrant thicket, brings a flavor with it fresher far than that of the
mint-julep. It is cheaper than the latter compound, too, and much more
conducive to health. Continuing to indulge our fancy in cool images
connected with fur and its finders, we shall see what contrasts will
arise. The blue shadow of a cottonwood-tree stretching over a
mountain-spring. By the edge of the sparkling water sits, embroidering
buckskin, a red-legged squaw, keeper of the wigwam to the ragged
mountain-man who set the traps that caught the martens which furnished
the tails that mark so gracefully the number of skins of which the
rich banker's wife's _fichu-russe_ is composed.
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