George and Gertrude needed but a single
announcement of dinner from the clerk to make them hasten for seats at so
inviting a meal. They sat near an open window, and never did they enjoy a
dinner more. College work was now over, and on the threshold of life,
apart from the busy world in sight below, two souls could plan and
confide in each other. As the two walked the broad porch, a panorama
unfolded before them of almost unsurpassed beauty.
Charles Sumner who, in 1847, stood on Mt. Holyoke, said, "I have never
seen anything so unsurpassingly lovely as this." He had traveled through
the Highlands of Scotland, up and down the Rhine, had ascended Mont
Blanc, and stood on the Campagna in Rome. Gertrude with her college mates
had often climbed Mt. Holyoke, and she was very familiar with this
masterpiece of nature in western Massachusetts. So she described the
grand landscape to her lover who sat enchanted with the scene before him.
"This alluvial basin," she said, "is twenty miles in length and fifteen
in width, and is enclosed by the Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom ranges, and the
abrupt cones of Toby and Sugar Loaf, while the Green Mountains lie to the
north, whence the rich soils have been brought by thousands of vernal
floods.
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