great picture-book
that always lies ready for the turning of the youngest or the oldest
hands; was receiving the welcome of the playmates she best loved, and
was silently yielding herself to the power which works all wonders with
its benignant magic. Hour after hour she journeyed along that fluent
road. Under bridges where early fishers lifted up their lines to let
them through; past gardens tilled by unskilful townsmen who harvested an
hour of strength to pay the daily tax the city levied on them; past
honeymoon cottages where young wives walked with young husbands in the
dew, or great houses shut against the morning. Lovers came floating down
the stream with masterless rudder and trailing oars. College race-boats
shot by with modern Greek choruses in full blast and the frankest
criticisms from their scientific crews. Fathers went rowing to and fro
with argosies of pretty children, who gave them gay good morrows.
Sometimes they met fanciful nutshells manned by merry girls, who made
for shore at sight of them with most erratic movements and novel
commands included in their Art of Navigation. Now and then some poet or
philosopher went musing by, fishing for facts or fictions, where other
men catch pickerel or perch.

All manner of sights and sounds greeted Sylvia, and she felt as if she
were watching a Panorama painted in water colors by an artist who had
breathed into his work the breath of life and given each figure power to
play its part. Never had human faces looked so lovely to her eye, for
morning beautified the plainest with its ruddy kiss; never had human
voices sounded so musical to her ear, for daily cares had not yet
brought discord to the instruments tuned by sleep and touched by
sunshine into pleasant sound; never had the whole race seemed so near
and dear to her, for she was unconsciously pledging all she met in that
genuine Elixir Vitae which sets the coldest blood aglow and makes the
whole world kin; never had she felt so truly her happiest self, for of
all the costlier pleasures she had known not one had been so congenial
as this, as she rippled farther and farther up the stream and seemed to
float into a world whose airs brought only health and peace. Her
comrades wisely left her to her thoughts, a smiling Silence for their
figure-head, and none among them but found the day fairer and felt
himself fitter to enjoy it for the innocent companionship of maidenhood
and a happy heart.

At noon they dropped