Crossword-Solution: SARANAC 7 letters, 41 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

THE GENESIS OF ‘THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE’ I was walking one night in the verandah of a small house in which I lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac.

Our house—emphatically ‘Baker’s’—is on a hill, and has a sight of a stream turning a corner in the valley—bless the face of running water!—and sees some hills too, and the paganly prosaic roofs of Saranac itself; the Lake it does not see, nor do I regret that; I like water (fresh water I mean) either running swiftly among stones, or else largely qualified with whisky.

CROCKETT [_Saranac Lake_, _Spring_ 1888.] DEAR MINISTER OF THE FREE KIRK AT PENICUIK,—For O, man, I cannae read your name!—That I have been so long in answering your delightful letter sits on my conscience badly.

Let those who will, chant in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and Mississippi and Niagara, but my prose shall flow--or straggle along at such a pace as the prosaic muse may grant me to attain--in praise of Beaverkill and Neversink and Swiftwater, of Saranac and Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and Aroostook and Moose River.

The father has received the new title of "governor," indicating not less, but more authority, and has called in new instructors to carry on the boy's education: real Adirondack guides--old Sam Dunning and one-eyed Enos, the last and laziest of the Saranac Indians.