buffalo,
stump-speaking, and the like, there is none so intense as shooting
rapids in a birch. Whenever I recall our career down the Penobscot, a
longing comes over me to repeat it.

We dropped down stream without further adventures. We passed the second
house, the first village, and other villages, very white and wide-awake,
melodiously named Nickertow, Pattagumpus, and Mattascunk. We spent the
first night at Mattawamkeag. We were again elbowed at a tavern table,
and compelled to struggle with real and not ideal pioneers for fried
beefsteak and soggy doughboys. The last river day was tame, but not
tiresome. We paddled stoutly by relays, stopping only once, at the
neatest of farm-houses, to lunch on the most airy-substantial bread and
baked apples and cream. It is surprising how confidential a traveller
always is on the subject of his gastronomic delights. He will have the
world know how he enjoyed his dinner, perhaps hoping that the world by
sympathy will enjoy its own.

Late in the afternoon of our eighth day from Greenville, Moosehead Lake,
we reached the end of birch-navigation, the great mill-dams of Indian
Oldtown, near Bangor. Acres of great pine logs, marked three crosses and
a dash, were floating here at the boom; we saw what Maine men suppose
timber was made for. According to the view acted upon at Oldtown,
Senaglecouna has been for a century or centuries training up its lordly
pines, that gang-saws, worked by Penobscot, should shriek through their
helpless cylinders, gnashing them into boards and chewing them into
sawdust.

Poor Birch! how out of its element it looked, hoisted on a freight-car
and travelling by rail to Bangor! There we said adieu to Birch and
Cancut. Peace and plenteous provender be with him! Journeys make friends
or foes; and we remember our fat guide, not as one who from time to time
just did not drown us, but as the jolly comrade of eight days crowded
with novelty and beauty, and fine, vigorous, manly life. END.

* * * * *

A WOMAN.

Not perfect, nay! but full of tender wants.--THE PRINCESS

I sat by my window sewing, one bright autumn day, thinking much of
twenty other things, and very little of the long seam that slipped away
from under my fingers slowly, but steadily, when I heard the front-door
open with a quick push, and directly into my open door entered Laura
Lane, with a degree of impetus that explained the previous sound in the
hall. S