r such, just as there is
when you travel in Norway or America, until at last the hunger for old
things becomes ravenous and intolerable.

The yawl's mast will be able to pass under the bridge, for the tide is
low, and beyond it now we are in sunny green fields, and sailing on
smoothly amid quiet villages, rich pastures, and the exuberant
hop-grounds of thoroughly English Kent.

Three boys bathing from a boat came near, and for a treat we took them on
board, while their hair dripped wet and their teeth chattered fast after
too long a swim, but they had read the name on my white flag, and they
had also read two canoe books, and so for miles they devoured all that
was said and shewn on the yawl; then thanking much because they were
"awfully glad," and they rowed home. How pleasant it is to give pleasure
to boys!

The Rob Roy got aground only once in this trip above the bridge, and that
only for five minutes, which, except the bump on a rock at Bembridge, was
her sole mishap of this sort, an immunity quite extraordinary from the
seaman's dreaded foe, the shore. The barges that were now floating up
the crowded Medway interested me exceedingly, and acquaintance was
readily made with their inhabitants almost every day for the next three
weeks, until it became evident that "Barge Life" is a stratum of society
quite as full of character and incident as any other, and wide open for
examination by those who would study a _genus_ of mankind very little
known. Large and important duties are entrusted to these men; rich
cargoes are committed to their honesty and skill; families live on barges
by thousands, {280} and the coasting journey of a barge is by no means an
easy thing or a dull one.

We must not judge of them by those great black boxes full of coals, that
float on the water above London Bridge, with one man and a long oar, and
yet even a coal barge is worth watching. In the dank mist of a dull
November evening it will drift unseen past the Temple Gardens. Wonderful
sounds launch into the fog from an invisible shouter on board, whose
"Tom" or "Bill" on a wharf ashore instantly knows the call, and answers.
Then there is a colloquy loud, and public in the extreme, yet utterly
private in its meaning to any one besides the two who are talking. It is
only paralleled by the shrill interjections of London street boys calling
to each other across the Strand, of which the grown-up public cannot make
out one syllable, but whic