double and looks the same either way up. Then when the steamer's
whistle blows as it comes into the wharf, you hear it echo among the
trees of the island, and reverberate back from the shores of the
lake.

The scene is all so quiet and still and unbroken, that Miss
Cleghorn,--the sallow girl in the telephone exchange, that I spoke
of--said she'd like to be buried there. But all the people were so
busy getting their baskets and gathering up their things that no one
had time to attend to it.

I mustn't even try to describe the landing and the boat crunching
against the wooden wharf and all the people running to the same side
of the deck and Christie Johnson calling out to the crowd to keep to
the starboard and nobody being able to find it. Everyone who has been
on a Mariposa excursion knows all about that.

Nor can I describe the day itself and the picnic under the trees.
'There were speeches afterwards, and Judge Pepperleigh gave such
offence by bringing in Conservative politics that a man called
Patriotus Canadiensis wrote and asked for some of the invaluable
space of the Mariposa Times-Herald and exposed it.

I should say that there were races too, on the grass on the open side
of the island, graded mostly according to ages, races for boys under
thirteen and girls over nineteen and all that sort of thing. Sports
are generally conducted on that plan in Mariposa. It is realized that
a woman of sixty has an unfair advantage over a mere child.

Dean Drone managed the races and decided the ages and gave out the