Beyond the average range of the swimmers sped hither and thither a score of light skiffs or canoes, whose occupants prudently wore their bathing dresses and sat heedfully amidships as they plied their long paddles. Finally, I may mention the diving-board, an infernal machine of a thirty foot plank supported at a third of its length on the axle of a tall pair of wheels, and so rolled into the water, to be rushed up and jumped off of by dashing divers. That diving-board was a daily thorn in the side of the English artist, who was not a dashing diver and who would have greatly preferred to take to the water like a duck--that is quietly and smoothly--but whom a false pride constrained to mount that penitential plank morning after morning, and upset himself off the end of it with an agonised effort--seldom or never successful--to strike the water vertically. What fools sensible people will make of themselves for the sake of being like the fools who are ready-made! It may as well be mentioned here, since the truth is sure to crop out sooner or later, that the name of the cynical and Frenchified English artist was Mr. Claude Campbell, and that he was, consequently, no less a personage than myself, who write concerning him. Let this confession put the reader on his guard against whatever exaggerative or prejudicial statements he may fancy he detects in what I have told or have yet to tell. I do not pretend to be an absolutely impartial historian of events in which myself have been an actor. I promise only to set down things as they appeared to me at the time, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. Did I make the world, or even organise human society? No; nor am I responsible for the logic of events, which, on the other hand, has often struck me as being a shocking bad system of logic. As for the red-cheeked American, he was Jefferson Montgomery, Esquire, of Boston, as aforesaid, and he shall speak for himself. II. 'Hullo, Jeff! Just a year since we parted on Beacon Hill.' 'My _dear_ Campbell,' said Jeff, giving my hand a strong pressure, while his blue eyes beamed and his white teeth flashed, 'this is _really very nice_. Have you been here long?' 'Maybe a week.' 'A _week_? _Really!_ how _very strange_!'