but a few rods from the river's bank. Here, amidst decorous shrubbery,
upon smooth shaven and rolled turf, where marble vases overflow with
gorgeous flowers, sit Pater and Mater among their dozens of guests. Some
of the gentlemen are in correct morning dress, some in boating-costumes,
and some in that last stage of unclothedness or first of clothedness
which is the English bathing-dress. In their striped tights on land
these last look exactly like saw-dust and rope ring clowns, but when
they dive into the water from that well-bred lawn and dart in wild
pursuit of the maidens, who beat them off with oars from climbing into
the canoes, amid shouts of aquatic and terrestrial laughter, one would
almost swear they were neither the clowns they looked a moment ago, nor
yet the English gentlemen they really are, but fantastic mermen bent
upon carrying earth-brides back with them into their cool native depths
beneath the bright water.

That is what it looks like. But a single glimpse into those cool dappled
depths, where the sunny water is shoal enough to show bottom, reveals,
alas! how little mermaiden and romantic those depths are. For London
does not disport itself every Sunday on the Thames without leaving ample
traces of that disporting. We see those traces gleaming and glooming
there,--empty beer- and wine-bottles, devitalized sardine-boxes, osseous
remains of fish, flesh, and fowl, scooped cheese-rinds, egg-shells, the
buttons of defrauded raiment, and the parted rims of much-snatched-at
and vigorously-squabbled-for straw hats.

A favorite boating-trip is from Teddington up to Oxford, or _vice
versa_, spending a week or two on the way, and stopping at river-side
inns at night. In the season these inns are full to overflowing, and the
roughest and smallest of water-side hamlets holds its accommodations at
lofty premiums. A number of public pleasure-steamers and many private