“And then Can-ee-dah,” insisted Percy wisely, “while you would be building your navy or drilling your army, we should be attacking you through Can-ee-dah.” “But Canada doesn’t like you,” I replied. “And besides it only has six million people.” He insisted that Canada was a great source and hope and I finally said: “Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You want England to whip the United States, don’t you?” “Yes,” echoed both Percy and Charles heartily. “Very well, then for peace and quiet’s sake, I’ll agree that it can. England can whip the United States both on sea and land. Now is that satisfactory?” “Yes,” they echoed, unanimously. “Very well then,” I laughed. “It is agreed that the United States is badly beaten everywhere and always by England. Isn’t Marlowe lovely?” and fixed my interested gaze on the approaching village. In the first glimpse of Marlowe some of the most joyous memories of my childhood came back. I don’t know whether you as a boy or a girl loved to look in your first reader at pictures of quaint little towns with birds flying above belfries and gabled roofs standing free in some clear, presumably golden air, but I did. And here, across this green field lay a little town, the sweetness of which was most appealing. The most prominent things were an arched bridge and a church, with a square gray belfry, set in a green, tree-grown church-yard. I could see the smooth surface of the Thames running beside it, and as I live, a flock of birds in the sky. “Are those rooks?” I asked of Percy, hoping for poetry’s sake that they were. “Rooks or crows,” he replied, “I don’t know which.” “Are there rooks in Amáyreeka?” “No--there are no rooks.” “Ah, that’s something.” I walked briskly because I wanted to reach this pretty scene while the sun was still high, and in five minutes or so we were crossing the bridge. I was intensely interested in the low gray stone houses, with here and there a walk in front with a gate, and a very pretty churchyard lying by the water, and the sylvan loveliness of the Thames itself. On the bridge I stopped and looked at the water. It was as smooth as glass and tinged with the mellow light which the sun casts when it is low in the west. There were some small boats anchored at a gate which gave into some steps leading up to an inn--The Compleat Angler. On the other side, back of the church was another inn--the Lion and Elk or something like that--and below the bridge, more towards the west, an old man in a punt, fishing. There was a very old man such as I have often seen pictured in _Punch_ and the _Sketch_, sitting near the support of the bridge, a short black pipe between his very wrinkled lips. He was clad in thick greenish-brown clothes and heavy shoes and a low flat hat some curate may have discarded. His eyes, which he turned up at me as I passed, were small and shrewd, set in a withered, wrinkled skin, and his hands were a collection of dried lines, like wrinkled leather.