The quartette gazed, and smoked, until the fair outline before them became veiled in the soft haze which so enhances the glories of a perfect form and a rich complexion. They talked, they mused, they talked again; the Artist, the Scribbler and the Editor talked of their own special darlings of the same genus. They mused again, then they fell once more to admiring. The one blot upon the perfection of the being before them was that her sole guardian had christened her "Rochefort," but the Statesman, like statesmen in general, had his weaknesses, and if men cannot be tenderly enduring of the weaknesses of their friends, what statesman can live? At length the Rochefort's protector broke silence by saying, "Can you fellows gaze upon her, and talk of her rivals, and then refuse to go on a cruise this summer?" "Not I!" exclaimed the Editor. "Refuse?" exclaimed the Scribbler, and then he betrayed his Hibernian ancestry by adding, "I'd go alone, for the sake of having her with me." "And I know just where to go," said the Artist. "I know of a picturesque lake whose outlet is a placid river flowing through an Acadia like that which Longfellow has pictured, and breaking at last into wild rapids down which we can run like salmon in the fall." "Is Evangeline still there?" asked the Statesman, with symptoms of lively interest. "She is every where," replied the Artist. "Why," said the Statesman, examining his mental memoranda, "she died two centuries ago." "She is perennial," answered the Artist, and the Statesman inwardly cursed his own literal perceptives. "Let's take our sentiment when we are there," suggested the Editor; "this is the hour for action." The conversation which ensued need not be detailed here. It would consume so much ink and paper as materially to raise the price of these staples. It is sufficient to say that the quartette silenced forever the calumnious statement that only ladies talk two or three at a time, and that the necessary supplies decided upon for the trip exceeded in bulk the cargo of that most capacious vessel, the Mayflower. [Illustration] [Illustration: The Authors.] CANOEING IN KANUCKIA. I. GETTING UNDER WAY. All night the Statesman, the Editor, the Artist and the Scribbler had been rumbling northward in a sleeping car, and as day dawned the steady and quickened clank of wheels told that they were on a down grade toward the Lake, and nearing the point where vacation was really to begin. They had turned into their respective berths somewhere south of Albany; they awoke and looked down from a precipitous hillside into the clear Lake. Presently the train slowed and in another minute they were questioning the station-master about their canoes, which had preceded them as freight some days before. "No, can't wait till after breakfast. Must see them now."