Men of middle age here well remember the hostility and ridicule
the project occasioned when it was first broached. Some said no
railroad ever _could_ be built on the river's edge; and, if you
should build one, the enormous expense incurred would make it forever
unprofitable. It seemed then the height of Quixotism to lay an
expensive track where the river offered a free way to all. Property
holders, whose property was to be greatly benefited, fought the
railroad company with unusual spirit and persistence. But the railroad
came, nevertheless, and needs no advocate or apologist to-day. There
is no one now living here who would ask its removal, any more than he
would ask the removal of the Hudson River itself."
* * *
And lo! the Catskills print the distant sky,
And o'er their airy tops the faint clouds driven,
So softly blending, that the cheated eye
Forgets or which is earth or which is heaven.
_Theodore S. Fay_.
* * *
Mountains on mountains in the distance rise,
Like clouds along the far horizon's verge;
Their misty summits mingling with the skies,
Till earth and heaven seem blended into one.
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