There is no pleasanter, sweeter, healthier spot than the Backs of the Colleges. Get into your canoe at Silver Street. Put into that canoe:-- (1) The cushions of three other boats. (2) Two pipes, in order that one may be always cool, and tobacco. (3) One dozen boxes of matches, in order that one box may be always handy. (4) The spiritual part of your nature, which will not take up much room, but is useful to talk to. But do not take another man with you. I may frankly say, my reader, that you are absolutely the only man I know who has the keen appreciativeness, the capacity for quiet meditation, the dreaminess, the listlessness, the abominable laziness, that a Canadian canoe requires. The man who would attempt to get pace on in a Canadian canoe probably would analyse the want of harmony in the death-song which a swan never sings--or worse than that. The man who would try to make a Canadian canoe go where he wanted would be angry, because the inspiration of a poet does not always disappoint the expectations of a commonplace nature. You must go where the boat wants to go; and that depends upon wind and current, and on the number of other boats that run into you, and the way they do it, and the language of their occupants. * * * * * What a beautiful thing it is to lie at full length on the cushions, and see the sky through the trees--only the angels see the trees through the sky. My boat has taken me round to the back of Queen’s, and stopped just short of that little bridge. It is all old and familiar. The fowls coo as they cooed yesterday. The same two men in the same tub have the same little joke with one another in getting under the low bridge. Farther up, there is precisely the same number of flies on the same dead and putrescent animal. My boat went up to look at it, but could not stay. The recoil sent it back here; and here, apparently, it means to stop. You may take my word for it that a Canadian canoe knows a thing or two. I wish I could paint the song of the birds and set the beauty of the trees to music. But there is a prejudice against it. Music is masculine, Art is feminine, and Poetry is their child. The baby Poetry will play with any one; but its parents observe the division of sexes. That is why Nature is so decent and pleasant. I would treat her to some poetry if I did but know the names of things. For instance, I have no idea what that bird is, and asparagus is the only tree which I recognise at sight.