There was not a perfect loafer among them, but the best was undoubtedly C, and the next best was D. This will seem strange to any one who has not studied the effect of anticipation on happiness and the reverse. Nothing is real to us except our imagination of it. What would the perfect loafer have done? I know; and you, my sympathetic reader, know. But I do not think any of the others do. And it would be of no use to tell them, because they would not believe it. The answer is too long and elaborate to be given in any case. It should be remembered that loafing is not the science of living for pleasure, which is foolishness, but the science of living without trouble. We may believe, as it is said in “The New Republic,” that one of the two most lasting pleasures is the pleasure of saying a neat thing neatly; yet the perfect loafer will never become a conversationalist. But it is of little use to preach. After all I have said about the quantity of cushions necessary for comfort in a Canadian canoe, I constantly see men going out with far too few. I am always hearing complaints that we are not taught engineering or some other horribly useful thing. But why are we not taught the art of perfect living, which is loafing? * * * * * Only a few out of my many books do I ever bring on the water. Some of the best would seem quite out of place. To-day I’ve got that curious old translation of the “Entertainments of Kapnides” with me. I was reminded of it by seeing those children going along in the meadow, picking flowers. Of course you know the story well enough, but I cannot be bothered to be original in every chapter. It is the story of the Child Siren. Ligeia never cared about the child from the first. It interfered with business. It absolutely refused to play her accompaniments, and said it could not bear to see the sailors tempted to their death. On this particular day it had interrupted Ligeia just as she reached the most tender, pathetic, touching part of her song. The sob of the child broke into the sloppy waltz refrain, and spoiled the spell. And the helmsman had turned the ship’s prow out again from the coast, and there was another crew gone. “You sinful little beast,” said Ligeia. “Get out of my sight.” The child was not sorry to go. She climbed up the cliff, and then wandered on away from the sea, where the long grass came up to her waist. And as she wandered, the sun shone brightly, and the cool wind blew into her hair, and the birds sang above her, and only a little distance away sounded the drowsy murmurs of the waves.