Published in The Yale Literary Magazine in November 1861, Howard Kingsbury’s “A Summer Experience” offers a vivid, first-hand account of the Yale Glee Club’s time in New Hampshire’s White Mountains at the height of the region’s 19th-century tourism era. Kingsbury writes of their stay at the Profile House, then one of the most celebrated grand hotels in the mountains, and of excursions into the surrounding landscape, including a visit to John Merrill at the Pool at the Flume. Blending personal reflection with careful observation, the essay captures the rhythms of travel, hospitality, and natural wonder that defined the New England experience for generations of summer visitors—and provides a rare glimpse of places and people that shaped the history of our region.

By Jim Hamilton (Spring 1992, The Resuscitator) NOTE: If you’d like to start at the beginning, head on over to Bearding the Old Man—Part One Collecting information about the 1955 bearding of the Old Man of the Mountains led us to David “Stretch” Hays, trailmaster of the AMC trail crew that summer who had mentioned […]

Little is known about the first attempt to beard the Old Man of the Mountain because there are no known photographs or newspaper reports to document the event and the principal players included the celebrated son of the other “Old Man”—Joe Dodge—who would not have taken kindly to knowing that son Brookie “Hirum” went AWOL from Lakes of the Clouds to pull off the daring stunt. It’s interesting that the secret was so well kept that, years later, a second bearding party knew that Hirum and an accomplice had attempted to attach a tree to the Old Man’s chin, but were probably unsuccessful. After all, if a tree falls in a forest with nobody around to hear it, does it actually make a sound?