with our baskets of eatables and drinkables, pursue our way to the borders of the lovely sheet. How beautifully it is slumbering beneath this rich light and soft heaven. The pictures of the white clouds sail across it like pure thoughts over a happy heart. Deliciously stream the shadows from the projecting banks; and see, there comes a little breeze, dotting the waters with its light footsteps, and then leaping up into yonder maple, making it turn suddenly pale with its flutter. The opposite shore looks green and cool; and there, in a beautiful recess or hollow, is to be our pic-nic. I discovered that recess myself. I was out fishing one day with Ike Davis, and waxing rather weary toward sundown, we pulled along the western shore to enjoy the shadow. Pushing along through the water-lilies, whose blossoms were strewed like golden balls all around us, I chanced to spy this little hollow. So we drove our skiff half its length on the silver strip of sand, and threw ourselves upon the soft grass, enjoying the coolness and fragrance till the stars came. I dreamed a great day-dream during those two hours; a dream fleeting and unsubstantial as the gold and crimson cloud whose reflection lay upon the smooth water before me. But to return. There is the scow (not a very romantic craft, reader, I own) fastened by its stone to the bank; and near it is the very skiff Davis and I used. The skiff is light and fleet, but as for the scow, it goes every way but the straight one. It will glide corner-wise, and make tolerable good way even broadside; but as for going straight forward, it appears to be the last thing in the world it intends doing. However, not more than four can sit comfortably in the skiff, so the majority of us must trust ourselves to the cork-screw propensities of the scow. Lavigne and Murray, with their ladies, take possession of the former, and the rest of us the latter. We all, then, embark upon the pure, glossy sheet for the recess. Ha! ha! ha! this is too amusing. Whilst the skiff shoots from us straight as a dart toward the goal, we go shuffling and wriggling along, first one side and then the other, like a bumpkin in a ball-room; and as the four who assumed the paddles relax their efforts in despair, the old scow turns broadside, and as if in contempt, is actually, I believe, making way backward. “Paddle away, boys!” I exclaim, “or we’ll be at the bank again in a minute.”