building a
flat-bottomed boat by the roadside: he talked with B---- about the
Boundary question, and swore fervently in favor of driving the British
"into hell's kitchen" by main force.

Colonel B----, the engineer of the mill-dam, is now here, after about a
fortnight's absence. He is a plain country squire, with a good figure,
but with rather a ponderous brow; a rough complexion; a gait stiff, and
a general rigidity of manner, something like that of a schoolmaster. He
originated in a country town, and is a self-educated man. As he walked
down the gravel path to-day, after dinner, he took up a scythe, which
one of the mowers had left on the sward, and began to mow, with quite a
scientific swing. On the coming of the mower, he laid it down, perhaps a
little ashamed of his amusement. I was interested in this; to see a man,
after twenty-five years of scientific occupation, thus trying whether
his arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his
youth,--mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in
his shirt-sleeves,--and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery
beneath a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and then
went to oversee the laborers at the mill-dam.

* * * * *

_Monday, July 24th._--I bathed in the river on Thursday evening, and in
the brook at the old dam on Saturday and Sunday,--the former time at
noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive,
there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the
forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and
babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring in
a little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up the
brook, there was a long vista,--now ripples, now smooth and glassy
spaces, now large rocks, almost blocking up the channel; while the trees
stood upon either side, mostly straight, but here and there a branch
thrusting itself out irregularly, and one tree, a pine, leaning
over,--not bending,--but leaning at an angle over the brook, rough and
ragged; birches, alders; the tallest of all the trees an old, dead,
leafless pine, rising white and lonely, though closely surrounded by
others. Along the brook, now the grass and herbage extended close to the
water; now a small, sandy beach. The wall of rock before described,
looking as if it had been hewn, but with irregular strokes of the
workman, doing hi