If, from some dust}^ shelf corner, you take down a copy of Out-Doors at Idlcwild, blow the dust of years from it, and settle yourself to read, you may presently say, " Burroughs would have done this better, or Bradford Torrey that." Very possibly. Please to recollect that Willis did it first. To-day every man -- lawyer, physician, clergyman, hack, storekeeper, or clerk -- finds his way at least once a year into the country, where he follows his patron prophet, who has pointed out what he should enjoy and appreciate. The beauties of nature are now as

The Fisher's Reach 395 com|)letcly labelled as the trees in Central Park, but half a century ago the man who could write those old letters to the Home Journal was a discoverer. Those who attempted at first to follow him went in patentleather boots; they scrambled in broadcloth over the rocks, and knocked silk hats against the branches ; but it was a beginning. The enchanted glen that has been famous for half a century, under the name of Idlewild, has escaped with marvellous strange fortune the destroying influences that have assailed so many Meccas. The house which the poet owned is to-day unaltered in any essential feature. The i)resent holder of its title-deeds deserves the gratitude of those who have frequent occasion to deplore the demolition of local shrines. He has mine.

My cottage at Idlewild [wrote Willis] is a pretty type of the two lives they live who are wise -- the life in full view, which the world thinks all, and the life out of sight, of which the world knows nothing. You see its front porch from the thronged thoroughfares of the Hudson, but the grove Ijehind it overhangs a deep down glen, tracked but by my own tangled paths, and the wild torrent which by turns they avoid and follow.