saw their lordly and corpulent owners reading the "Times" upon the
handkerchief space which serves for porch or piazza before their front
doors--move up and down the river from crack hotel to cracker, taking no
note of picturesque "bits" or of mooring-places where Paradise seems
come down to lodge between Berks and Bucks, caring naught that at this
point four exquisite churches and two interesting manor-houses are
within tramping-distance, at that a feudal castle and the fairest inland
picture that England and nature can offer their lovers, caring only that
at the "King" the trout are the best cooked on the whole river, at the
"Queen" the chops are divine, while at the "Prince" the _perdrix aux
truffes_ are worth mooring there a week for. These house-boaters are
generally accompanied by garish wives and daughters, who spend their
time in the streets of the town where they chance to be moored,--and
they seldom are moored elsewhere than at the larger towns,--exchanging
greetings and chatting with such acquaintances as they there meet, or
idling up and down the river in the luxurious small boats of their
river-made friends. This type of house-boater himself is generally
spoken of in brisk naval asides as a "duffer," the kitchen of his boat
is a wine-closet, and, to look at him poring for hours over his paper,
one may well believe that time is heavy on his hands and that he arrives
during every summer vacation at depths of mortal ennui where "nothing
new is, and nothing true is, and no matter!"

Americans personally unacquainted with England can form little idea of
the extent to which physical culture is carried here, and the universal
summer madness for athletic sports and out-of-door amusements. The
equable climate, never too hot, never too cold, for river-pull or
cricket, is Albion's advantage in this respect over almost all the rest
of the world, and particularly over our fervid and freezing clime. Even
although this is pious England, where the gin-shops cannot open after