the noon of Sunday until the bells ring for the evening service and
"Pub" and church spring open and alight simultaneously, even in pious
England Sunday is the day of all the week on which the river takes on
its merriest aspect, and from the multitudes of familiar faces and
frequency of friendly greetings reminds one of Regent Street and the
Parks. All prosperous and proper London--the amusement is too costly for
'Arry--seems to float itself upon Thames water that day, coming up forty
land-miles from the metropolis to do so. Boats are furiously in demand,
every picnic nook is pre-empted from earliest morning, the river-side
tea-gardens are thronged, the inns are depleted of men and women in
yachting-costumes, and the locks are jammed as full as they can be of
highly-draped boats, gayly-dressed women, and circus-costumed men, the
whole scene gayer, brighter, more fantastic than any Venetian carnival
since the days of the most sumptuous of the Adriatic doges.

One or two real Venetian gondolas are kept at that river-reach where we
spent our summer. The owner of the principal one is an English nobleman
who lived long in Italy and whose twelve daughters were born there. It
is a sight to see those twelve beautiful sisters, from six years of age
to twenty-four, poled down the river to church every Sunday morning by a
swarthy and veritable Venetian gondolier. Whether or not that
hearse-like craft has sacred associations in the minds of the twelve
maidens all in a row, or whether its grimness and want of swiftness seem
out of place amid the carnival brilliancy of Sunday afternoon, it is
certain that it is never used except for church-going, and the maidens
appear later in the day each in her own swift little canoe, or two or
three sisters together in a larger one, darting to and fro, hither and
yon, with almost incredible swiftness, almost more like winged thoughts
than like even swallows on the wing. The gabled and ivy-wreathed
Elizabethan manor-house which is the summer home of the maidens stands