```Along the cliff to fall and pause and `````fall did seem._ `````--Alfred, Lord Tennyson, `````_The Lotus Eaters_.= [Illustration: 0109] VIII. IN THE LAND OF NOD [Illustration: 9109] T was on the Steamer “Empress,” plying between Point du Chene and Summerside, that the Preacher said to his small son, “Yonder is the land.” The boy gazed intently for a moment and then solemnly remarked, “That’s the Land of Nod.” Great chap, that boy! for to his many other accomplishments he added in that hour the gift of prophecy. It is the Land of Nod, for every one you meet on Prince Edward Island gives you a friendly nod, and after you have been there a few hours all tendency to pursue the strenuous life departs, and the summit of earthly bliss is found in sitting under the shade of an apple tree and nodding at nothing. Frankness demands a confession; namely, the Preacher went to Prince Edward Island to loaf. He was not in search of a divinity school, or a summer assembly, or a wealthy church paying fifty dollars per Sunday for supplies. He sought a spot where committee meetings and mosquitoes and dust and noise are unknown; where he could have unlimited supplies of fresh vegetables, milk, cream, johnny-cake and cornmeal mush; where he could tickle his lungs with the breath of the sea, and, above all, where the trout hold a reception every day in the week--except Sunday. Do I hear some dyspeptic, pessimistic preacher saying, “There isn’t any such place?” Skepticism is not strange in one whose cup of bliss runs over when he finds a place where two cottages are built on a forty-foot lot and where he can plunge into the wild dissipation of croquet. Few good trout streams flow past the front door of a summer hotel. It is necessary, as a rule, even on Prince Edward Island, to journey beyond the dooryard before coming to the favourite haunts of that festive fish. The walking is good? Yes, but the Preacher found a way that beats walking all to death. Have a man at the hotel where you are stopping, who keeps his own team and coachman; who counts that day lost in which he catches no trout; who is intelligent, genial, unselfish; who invites you daily to share his buggy in trips to streams that swarm with fish. Such a man there is (so far as the writer knows there is but one on the North American continent), and the Preacher found him. Do I hear pathetic cries from my brother preachers piscatorially inclined, asking, “What’s his name?”