she begins to scold before I am out of the boat or in it, for that
matter.

Across the fence next to Laguerre's lives a _confrère_, a brother exile,
Monsieur Marmosette, who also has a shop in the city, where he carves
fine ivories. Monsieur Marmosette has only one son. He too is named
François, after his father's old friend. Farther down on both sides of
the narrow stream front the cottages of other friends, all Frenchmen;
and near the propped-up bridge an Italian who knew Garibaldi burrows in
a low, slanting cabin, which is covered with vines. I remember a dish of
_spaghetti_ under those vines, and a flask of Chianti from its cellar,
all cobwebs and plaited straw, that left a taste of Venice in my mouth
for days.

As there is only the great bridge above, which helps the country road
across the little stream, and the little foot-bridge below, and as there
is no path or road,--all the houses fronting the water,--the Bronx here
is really the only highway, and so everybody must needs keep a boat.
This is why the stream is crowded in the warm afternoons with all sorts
of water craft loaded with whole families, even to the babies, taking
the air, or crossing from bank to bank in their daily pursuits.

There is a quality which one never sees in Nature until she has been
rough-handled by man and has outlived the usage. It is the picturesque.
In the deep recesses of the primeval forest, along the mountain-slope,
and away up the tumbling brook, Nature may be majestic, beautiful, and
even sublime; but she is never picturesque. This quality comes only
after the axe and the saw have let the sunlight into the dense tangle
and have scattered the falling timber, or the round of the water-wheel
has divided the rush of the brook. It is so here. Some hundred years