last night, under a full moon, there had been pairs of lovers
leaning over the rails of all the bridges along its course; but
that was a common sight, like that of the ardent couples sitting
on its shady banks these summer days, looking only into each
other's eyes, but exclaiming about the beauty of the water.
Lovers would come and go, sometimes reappearing with successive
installments of loves in a way wholly mysterious to the river.
Meantime it had its own work to do and must be about it, for the
side jams were to be broken and the boom "let out" at the
Edgewood bridge.



OLD KENNEBEC

It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley
smoothed the last wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up
a shred of corn-husk from the spotless floor under the bed,
slapped a mosquito on the window-sill, removed all signs of
murder with a moist towel, and before running down to breakfast
cast a frowning look at her pincushion. Almira, otherwise
"Mite," Shapley had been in her room the afternoon before and
disturbed with her careless hand the pattern of Rose's pins.
They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese cross; and
if, while she was extricating one from her clothing, there had
been an alarm of fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its
appointed place in the design, at the risk of losing her life.

Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning
sunshine with her. The old people had already engaged in