sometimes seen, and, if I mistake not, a second species of humming-bird
straying north by way of Mexico.

From where we stand, under a canopy of rich green leaves, looking out
upon the sunny water through a banian-like colonnade of mighty trunks
and hanging vines, the pearly moss tempering the light like jalousies,
summer seems but a relative idea. Fly-catchers flit back and forth,
barn-swallows and sand-martins skim the lake, and an occasional splash
or ripple at our feet shows that humbler life is getting astir. The
highest life, or what modest man calls such, we have all to ourselves.
Yet not quite; for there is visible yonder, beneath the outer tip of a
live-oak which we have found to stretch and droop twenty-four paces from
the seven-foot trunk, a little fleet of canoes. They belong to the
professional fisherman whose too tarry nets are quite an encumbrance
for some yards of the sandy beach, and whose well may be noticed about a
rifle-shot out from the shore. More than that, though Piscator is
absent, some one is inspecting his boats. In fact,--and it _is simple
fact_, and I am not smuggling in a bit of padding in the shape of
sentiment,--two persons become perceptible, both with their backs
towards us, now and studiedly all the time. One, a man, chooses a boat
after trying several, and, with similar show of unavoidable delay, is
cushioning the seats with carefully-arranged moss in four times the
necessary quantity. During this absorbing process he rips one of his
cuffs, or tears off a button from it, or smears it with the tar that
besets the boat and its oars. This calamity supplies the lady, a neat
young person, with a pretext for occupation, and she uses it to the
fullest and most affectionate extent. It is growing late, and unless we
relieve the couple of our obviously detected presence we shall deprive
them of their Sunday-afternoon row. That it is a row with the stream we
find ten days later, when their wedding becomes the sensation of the