stormy day, beaming from the edge of the western horizon; while the
massive firmament of clouds threw down all the gloom it could, but
served only to kindle the golden light into a more brilliant glow by
the strongly contrasted shadows. Heaven smiled at the earth, so long
unseen, from beneath its heavy eyelid. To-morrow for the hill-tops
and the woodpaths.

Or it might be that Ellery Charming came up the avenue to join me in a
fishing excursion on the river. Strange and happy times were those
when we cast aside all irksome forms and strait-laced habitudes and
delivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the Indians or
any less conventional race during one bright semicircle of the sun.
Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turned
aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for a mile
above its junction with the Concord, has never flowed on earth,
nowhere, indeed, except to lave the interior regions of a poet's
imagination. It is sheltered from the breeze by woods and a hillside;
so that elsewhere there might be a hurricane, and here scarcely a
ripple across the shaded water. The current lingers along so gently
that the mere force of the boatman's will seems sufficient to propel
his craft against it. It comes flowing softly through the midmost
privacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers it to be quiet;
while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as if
river and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river
sleeps along its course and dreams of the sky and of the clustering
foliage, amid which fall showers of broken sunlight, imparting specks
of vivid cheerfulness, in contrast with the quiet depth of the
prevailing tint. Of all this scene, the slumbering river has a dream-
picture in its bosom. Which, after all, was the most real,--the
picture, or the original?--the objects palpable to our grosser senses,