community, the novel proportions occasioned remark. Facetious bystanders
inquired sarcastically whether that thing were expected to carry
more than one,--plainly implying by labored emphasis that it would
occasionally be seen tenanted by even less than that number.
Transcendental friends inquired, with more refined severity, if the
proprietor expected to _meditate_ in that thing? This doubt at least
seemed legitimate. Meditation seems to belong to sailing rather than
rowing; there is something so gentle and unintrusive in gliding
effortless beneath overhanging branches and along the trailing edges of
clematis thickets;--what a privilege of fairy-land is this noiseless
prow, looking in and out of one flowery cove after another, scarcely
stirring the turtle from his log, and leaving no wake behind! It seemed
as if all the process of rowing had too much noise and bluster, and as
if the sharp slender wherry, in particular, were rather too pert and
dapper to win the confidence of the woods and waters. Time has dispelled
the fear. As I rest poised upon the oars above some submerged shallow,
diamonded with ripple-broken sunbeams, the fantastic Notonecta or
water-boatman rests upon his oars below, and I see that his proportions
anticipated the wherry, as honeycombs antedated the problem of the
hexagonal cell. While one of us rests, so does the other; and when one
shoots away rapidly above the water, the other does the same beneath.
For the time, as our motions seem the same, so with our motives,--my
enjoyment certainly not less, with the conveniences of humanity thrown
in.

But the sun is declining low. The club-boats are out, and from island
to island in the distance these shafts of youthful life shoot swiftly
across. There races some swift Atalanta, with no apple to fall in her
path but some soft and spotted oak-apple from an overhanging tree; there
the Phantom, with a crew white and ghostlike in the distance, glimmers