I have always had a strong curiosity about hermits—remember I paid a shilling as a small boy, when I could ill afford it, to see one, somewhere up by Hampstead, a cruel disappointment—used to make shy approaches to lonely turnpike keepers before they were abolished, with no success; finding them always, like Johnson’s “hoary sage,” inclined to cut sentiment short with, “Come, my lad, and drink some beer,” I came to the conclusion long since that the genuine hermit is as extinct as the dodo in the British Isles. I was almost excited, therefore, the other morning, to get a note on a dirty scrap of paper here, asking for the loan of a book on geology, for, on inquiry, I found it came from “the Hermit.” He had suddenly appeared to the man who drives the hack, and sent it in by him. No one could tell me anything more except that the writer was “the Hermit,” and lived, no one knew how, in a shanty four miles away in the forest. I got the book out of the library, “loaned” a pony, and in due course found myself outside a dilapidated snake-fence, surrounding some three acres of half-cleared forest, and the rudest kind of log-hut; evidently the place I was in search of, but no hermit. While I was meditating my next move, a dismal howl, like, I should think, the “lulilooing” of Central Africa, came from out the neighbouring bush. I shouted myself, and in a few moments “the Hermit” appeared, and certainly at first glance “filled the bill” satisfactorily. His head was a tangled mass of long hair and beard, out of which shone two big, blue eyes; a long, lean figure, slightly bent, and clothed in a tattered shirt, and trousers which no old Jew clothesman would have picked off a dunghill. I explained my errand and produced the book.

He thanked me, excused his dress; had other clothes, he said, in the house, which he would have put on had he expected me; was rather excited, so I must excuse him, as his “buck” had gone right off, in disgust, he believed, at the smallness of his flock, as he had only eight ewes. “Buck” I found to be Anglice “ram,” and that it was in the hope of luring back the insufficiently married lord of his flock that he had been howling when I came up. On my doubting whether such a call would not be more likely to speed the flight of the truant “buck,” he rushed awray in the other direction and uplifted it again; and in two or three minutes the eight ewes, with several lambs, were all round him, rubbing against his legs, while an Angora goat looked on with dignity from some yards off. From our talk I found that he was a Shrewsbury man, knew three or four languages, and mathematics up to the differential calculus; found England “too noisy,” and, moreover, could get no land there; had come out and gone to the agricultural class at Cornell University; had now bought this bit of land, on which he could live well, as he was a vegetarian (pointing round to some corn, turnips, etc., in his enclosure); had indigestion at first, but now had found out how to make bread which agreed with him. His trouble was the forest hogs, which were always watching to get at his crops, and his fence, having weak places, would not keep them out, so he had to be always on the watch. If he had any one to keep out the hogs, he could go and find his “buck,” he said, wistfully. The better man within me here was moved to offer to keep watch and ward against hogs while he sought his “buck”; but, on the whole, as the sun was already westering, and I had doubts as to when he might think of relieving guard, my better man did not prevail, and I changed the subject to the book I had brought. He glanced at the title-page, was pleased to find that it was of recent date, as his geology was rusty. Then, as he did not invite me into his log-hut, I rode away. Next evening, as I was strolling down our street, my attention was called to the noticeboard outside the chief store, kept by an excellent, kindly New Englander, Tucker by name, who very liberally allows any of his neighbours to use it. Here I found the following notice from “the Hermit,” which had been sent up by the hackman, to be posted. It opens, you will remark, in the true prophetic style. It ran: “Ho! all ye passers by! Strayed—like a fool!—a Ram (a male sheep,) butts like a nipper, and runs after! God will bless the seer if he lets Isaac Williams, of Sedgemoor Road, know. That is all. Please, Mr. Tucker, post this. Oh, I forgot,—Buy of Tucker!” I think you will agree that I have struck a bona fide hermit in my old age.

But to return to my loafing idyll. Perhaps, if I had to select out of several the ideal loafing haunt in these parts, it would be the verandah of our doctor, another bright New Englander, a graduate of Harvard, and M.D., who, after fourteen years’ practice at Boston, was driven South by threatenings of chest troubles, and happily pitched on this tableland amongst the mountains. Not that he is a loaf-brother, except on rare occasions; a man diligent in his business, and prompt to answer any professional call; but as nobody seems ever to be ill, his leisure is abundant. The greater part of this he spends in the study and practice of grape-culture, in which he has, in the five years since he took it up, earned a high reputation. But in these autumn months, all the pruning, thinning, and tending are over in the forenoon, and in the hours which follow, which are delightfully hot and enjoyable to all sun-lovers, he is generally to be found in his verandah, well supplied with rocking-chairs. In front of the verandah is his principal vineyard, sloping south, and at the bottom of the slope, right away to the distant mountain-range (with Pike’s Peak soaring to the clouds, the centre of the military telegraph system in the war, from which messages were flashed to Look-out Mountain, over Chattanooga, in the critical days of battle, before Sherman started on his march to the sea), wave beyond wave, as it were, of many-coloured forest, each taking fresh tints as clouds flit over, and the triumphant old sun slopes to the West. There one may find the doctor in his rocker, his feet higher than his head on one of the verandah supports—and all who have learnt to appreciate the rocking-chair will agree that “heels up” is half the battle—his tobacco and a book on vines on a small table by his side, and over his head, within easy reach, a rope depending from the verandah roof. At first I took it for the common domestic bell-pull, but soon discovered its more subtle bearing on the luxury of loafing. The doctor had been much exercised by the visits of birds of outrageous appetite to his “Norton’s Virginia,” and other precious vines. At first he had resorted to his double-barrelled gun and small shot—indeed, it yet stood in a corner of the balcony, loaded—but had soon abandoned it. Its use was compatible neither with his love for birds nor the enjoyment of his rocking-chair. So, by an ingenious arrangement, he had hung bells at five or six points in the vineyard, connecting each and all with the depending-rope, so that no sooner did a bird settle with a view to lunch or dinner, than it was saluted by a peal from a bell close by, which sent it skirling back to the forest, while the doctor had neither to lower his heels nor take the pipe from his mouth.

Watching the entire discomfiture of the birds adds, I must own, a keener zest even to the delicious view and air, and to the racy stories of Western life poured out by one or another of the loaf-brethren. A specimen or two may amuse your readers. Placard over the piano in a favourite resort of Texan cowboys: “Don’t shoot the musician; he is doing his best.” Cowboy entering the cars at midnight, thermometer below zero, after snorting for a minute, lets down a window, is remonstrated with, and replies, “Wal, I’d as soon sleep with my head in a dead horse as in this car with the windows shut!” Another tale I repeat with hesitation, though it was seriously vouched for by the narrator as going on in his neighbourhood, and within his own cognisance. An eccentric settler, who played the fiddle powerfully, and lived next a man who had thrown a bridge over a creek, in respect of which the knotty question of “right of way” had arisen between them, read, or discovered somehow, that excessive vibration was the cause of the fall of bridges, and that a well-known railway iron bridge had been distinctly felt to vibrate to the notes of a fiddle, all that was necessary being to find the right chord and play up. Thereupon he set himself on the peccant bridge, and fiddled till he had hit on the sympathetic chord to his own satisfaction; since which he has put in all his spare time at the bridge, fiddling on the right chord and looking for the signs of a crash and the discomfiture of his neighbour. A mad world, my masters! And lucky for the world, say I. But for the cracked fellows going up and down, what a dull place it would be!

The whole neighbourhood, or, at any rate, the men of hunting age, have suddenly been roused into unwonted excitement and activity by the presence of a specimen of the larger carnivora close to this town. It is either a large panther or what they call a Mexican lion—at any rate, as big a beast of this kind as are bred over here, as his footprint, seen of many persons, clearly proves. He has been heard to roar by numbers, and Giles, the saw-mill man, who, passing along wholly unarmed, saw him gliding through the bush close by, puts him at five feet from nose to tail (root, not tip) at least. Giles adds that, at the sight, his hair stood up and distinctly lifted his straw hat—so perhaps his evidence must be discounted considerably. Any way, a party, now collecting dogs to bring him to bay, start to-morrow at dawn to give an account of him. It is more than a year since one has ventured down this way. A slaughter-house which has lately been set up in the woods near by would seem to have drawn him. Let us hope that no cunning old sportsman will watch there to-night and bag him single-handed, and I may possibly have to tell you of a memorable hunt next week.