The Lightning Conductor Discovers America   By: Alice Muriel Williamson (1869-1933)

by

C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

Illustrated

[Illustration: Patricia Moore]

Published by Doubleday Page & Company Garden City New York

Copyright, 1916, by C. N. And A. M. Williamson

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian

[Illustration: page decoration]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Patricia Moore Frontispiece

PAGE

Long Island

"There's absolutely nothing like it on the other side of the water, not even in Devonshire or Dorset" 87

Easthampton

"You enter beside the Great Pond, which is so charming in itself and in its flat frame of village green" 95

Long Island South shore

"Artists would find a paradise of queer, cozy gables, and corners of gardens crowded with old fashioned flowers" 102

"Southampton's soul is very, very old, full of memories of Indians" 122

Sunnyside

"Washington Irving's dear old Dutch house is like a beautiful living body with his memory for its soul" 190

"The old Dutch Church at Tarrytown" 197

The Hudson River

"When we came into sudden sight of the river there was a magical effect" 207

Delaware Water Gap "Winding and wonderful it was in beauty" 213

"The mountains seem cleft in twain. It's a marvellous effect startling" 216

York A bit of the rock bound Maine coast 303

"The air is spiced with the fragrance of balsam fir...on the way to Crawford Notch" 310

"The young, slender birches of the mountain wayside" 319

Crawford's Notch, White Mountains 324

"I shall always think of Vermont as the State of wild lawns and gardens" 330

"We found the Green Mountains particularly lovable" 336

Captain Winston's maps pages 90, 114, 132, 209, 216, 239, 258, 295, 311, 325, 331, and 339

THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR DISCOVERS AMERICA

I

THE HONBLE MRS. WINSTON (NÉE MOLLY RANDOLPH) TO HER FRIEND, THE COUNTESS OF LANE

On Board SS. Evangeline, March 15th.

DEAREST MERCÉDES:

It will be days, also nights (worse luck, for my cabin chirps like a cricket, sings like a canary, and does a separate realistic imitation of each animal in the Zoo!), before we get to New York. But I have crochet cramp and worsted wrist from finishing a million scarfs since we sailed, so I feel it will ease the strain to begin a letter to you. I dare say, anyhow, I shan't close it till the last minute, with a P. S. to say we're arriving safely if we do! One never knows nowadays. And we have on board a man who's been torpedoed twice. I hope he isn't the kind to whom everything happens in threes. By the way, he's the Ship's Mystery, and this letter can't be a complete record of the voyage unless I tell you about him. Place aux dames , however. There's a girl I want to tell you about first. Or had I better polish off our own family history and make a clean sweep of ourselves before beginning on anybody else? On second thoughts, I will!