of paddle-wheel, the rush and foam of beaten water among the piles,
splash of ropes and rumble of gangways, and all the attendant hurry
and scurry of the human morrice. Here, tanquam in speculo, the Loafer
as he lounges may, by attorney as it were, touch gently every stop in
the great organ of the emotions of mortality. Rapture of meeting,
departing woe, love at first sight, disdain, laughter, indifference --
he may experience them all, but attenuated and as if he saw them in a
dream; as if, indeed, he were Heine's god in dream on a mountain-side.
Let the drowsy deity awake and all these puppets, emanations of his
dream, will vanish into the nothing whence they came. And these
emotions may be renewed each morning; if a fair one sail to-day, be
sure that one as fair will land to-morrow. The supply is
inexhaustible.

But in the South perhaps the happiest loafing-ground is the gift of
Father Thames; for there again the contrast of violent action, with
its blisters, perspiration, and the like, throws into fine relief the
bliss of ``quietism.'' I know one little village in the upper reaches
where loafing may be pushed to high perfection. Here the early hours
of the morning are vexed by the voices of boaters making their way
down the little street to the river. The most of them go staggering
under hampers, bundles of waterproofs, and so forth. Their voices are
clamant of feats to be accomplished: they will row, they will punt,
they will paddle, till they weary out the sun. All this the Loafer
hears through the open door of his cottage, where in his shirt-sleeves
he is dallying with his bacon, as a gentleman should. He is the only
one who has had a comfortable breakfast -- and he knows it. Later he
will issue forth and stroll down in their track to the bridge. The
last of these Argonauts is pulling lustily forth; the river is dotted
with evanishing blazers. Upon all these lunatics a pitiless Phoebus