, will not permit, and when free, the wind, which
has been scattering tiles and chimney-pots and snapping telegraph wires
in the City all the week, drops on the Saturday to nothing. He must
possess invincible patience, and at the same time be always ready to
advance his vessel even a foot, and his judgment must never fail him at
the critical time.

But the few brief hours when the circumstances are favourable compensate
for delays and monotonous calms; the vessel, built on well-judged lines,
answers her helm and responds to his will with instant obedience, and
that sense of command is perhaps the great charm of sailing. There are
others who find a pleasure in the yacht. When at her moorings on a sunny
morning she is sometimes boarded by laughing girls, who have put off
from the lawn, and who proceed in the most sailor-like fashion to
overhaul the rigging and see that everything is shipshape. No position
shows off a well-poised figure to such advantage as when, in a
close-fitting costume, a lady's arms are held high above her head to
haul at a rope.

So the river life flows by; skiffs, and four oars, canoes, solitary
scullers in outriggers, once now and then a swift eight, launches, a
bargee in a tublike dingey standing up and pushing his sculls instead of
pulling; gentlemen, with their shoulders in a halter, hauling like
horses and towing fair freights against the current; and punts poled
across to shady nooks. The splashing of oars, the staccato sound as a
blade feathered too low meets the wavelets, merry voices, sometimes a
song, and always a low undertone, which, as the wind accelerates it,
rises to a roar. It is the last leap of the river to the sea; the last
weir to whose piles the tide rises. On the bank of the weir where the
tide must moisten their roots grow dense masses of willow-herb, almost
as high as the shoulder, with trumpet-shaped pink flowers.

Let us go back again to the bank by the cornfields, with the glorious
open stretch of stream. In the evening, the rosy or golden hues of the
sunset will be reflected on the surface from the clouds; then the bats
wheel to and fro, and once now and then a nighthawk will throw himself
through the air with uncertain flight, his motions scarcely to be
followed, as darkness falls. Am I mistaken, or are kingfishers less
numerous than they were only a few seasons since? Then I saw them, now I
do not. Long-continued and severe frosts are very fatal to these birds;
they