pool, under the ancient, overhanging elms and willows and sycamores! We
gave ourselves to the current, and darted swiftly past the row of
weather-beaten houses on the left bank, into the heart of the woods
again.

Here the forest was dense, lofty, overarching. The tall silver maple,
the black ash, the river birch, the swamp white oak, the sweet gum and
the sour gum, and a score of other trees closed around the course of
the stream as it swept along with full, swirling waters. The air was
full of a diffused, tranquil green light, subdued yet joyous, through
which flakes and beams of golden sunshine flickered and sifted
downward, as if they were falling into some strange, ethereal
medium--something half liquid and half aerial, midway between an
atmosphere and the still depths of a fairy sea.

The spirit of enchantment was in the place; brooding in the delicate,
luminous midday twilight; hushing the song of the strong-flowing river
to a humming murmur; casting a spell of beautiful immobility on the
slender flower-stalks and fern-fronds and trailing shrubberies of the
undergrowth, while the young leaves of the tree-tops, far overhead,
were quivering and dancing in the sunlight and the breeze. Here Oberon
and Titania might sleep beneath a bower of motionless royal Osmunda.
Here Puck might have a noon-tide council with Peaseblossom, Cobweb,
Moth, and Mustardseed, holding forth to them in whispers, beneath the
green and purple sounding-board of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Here, even in
this age of reason, the mystery of nature wove its magic round the
curious mind of man,

"Annihilating all that's made,
To a green thought in a green shade."

Do you remember how old Andrew Marvell goes on from those two lovely
lines, in his poem?

"Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and claps its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light."

There were many beautiful shrubs and bushes coming into bloom around us
as we drifted down the stream. Two of the fairest bore the names of
nymphs. One was called after Leucothoe, "the white goddess," and its
curved racemes of tiny white bells hanging over the water were worthy
emblems of that pure queen who leaped into the sea with her babe in her
arms to escape