o the colonial times by a few old houses, and resisting
with its respectable provincialism the encroachments of modern
smartness, and the sleepy wharf in the sleepy harbor, where the little
steamer is obligingly waiting for the last passenger, for the very
last woman, running with a bandbox in one hand, and dragging a jerked,
fretting child by the other hand, to make the hour's voyage to the Isles
of Shoals.

(The shrewd reader objects to the bandbox as an anachronism: it is
no longer used. If I were writing a novel, instead of a veracious
chronicle, I should not have introduced it, for it is an anachronism.
But I was powerless, as a mere narrator, to prevent the woman coming
aboard with her bandbox. No one but a trained novelist can make a
long-striding, resolute, down-East woman conform to his notions of
conduct and fashion.)

If a young gentleman were in love, and the object of his adoration were
beside him, he could not have chosen a lovelier day nor a prettier scene
than this in which to indulge his happiness; and if he were in love, and
the object absent, he could scarcely find a situation fitter to nurse
his tender sentiment. Doubtless there is a stage in love when scenery of
the very best quality becomes inoperative. There was a couple on board
seated in front of the pilot-house, who let the steamer float along the
pretty, long, landlocked harbor, past the Kittery Navy-yard, and out
upon the blue sea, without taking the least notice of anything but each
other. They were on a voyage of their own, Heaven help them! probably
without any chart, a voyage of discovery, just as fresh and surprising
as if they were the first who ever took it. It made no difference to
them that there was a personally conducted excursion party on board,
going, they said, to the Oceanic House on Star Island, who had out their
maps and guide-books and opera-glasses, and wrung the last drop of the
cost of their tickets out of every foot of the scenery. Perhaps it was
to King a more sentimental journey than to anybody else, because he
invoked his memory and his imagination, and as the lovely shores opened
or fell away behind the steamer in ever-shifting forms of beauty, the
scene was in harmony with both his hope and his longing. As to Marion
and the artist, they freely appropriated and enjoyed it. So that
mediaeval structure, all tower, growing out of the rock, is Stedman's
Castle--just like him, to let his art spring out of nature in that