and some strips of shingle he would make a figure of a man with a saw;
you fixed it to the edge of a table, set the door-knob swinging, and the
creature would saw with the most absurd diligence. From the same shingle
he would construct a pugilist, who, being set up where the wind played
upon him, would swing his arms interminably. It was yacht-building,
however, that afforded us most entertainment. A shingle was whittled to
a point at one end; a stick with a square paper slipped on it was stuck
up in the middle, and a rudder made fast to the stern; such a boat would
sail boldly out upon the vastness of the lake, till the eye could no
longer follow the diminishing white speck. These days beside the lake
were full of good things. The water was clear, with a white sand bottom;
we were given swimming-lessons in the hot summer weather; having waded
in up to our middles, we faced towards the shore, where sat our father
with a long fishing-pole, the end of which he kept within our reach,
and bade us lean forward on the water and kick up our feet. But, for my
part, I kept one foot on the bottom. It was not till years afterwards
that I mustered courage to take it off, and that was in a lake three
thousand miles from Stockbridge Bowl, with the towers of the castle of
Chillon reflected in its calm surface.

We also made limited use of a leaky old punt, which one day capsized and
emptied its whole crew into the water, luckily close to shore. We fished
for gold carp for hours together, and during our two summers we caught a
couple of them; there were thousands of them swimming about; but a bent
pin with the bait washed off is not a good lure. In winter, the lake had
five feet of ice on it, which lasted far into the spring, and once or
twice we got aboard this great raft and tracked across it, with as much
awe and enthusiasm as ever Kane had felt in his arctic explorations. In
all, we became intimate friends with the lake idea, new to us then, but
never to grow stale; and our good fortune favored us during after-life
with many lovely lakes and ponds, including such gems as Rydal, Walden,
and Geneva.

Water, in another enchanting guise, dashed and gurgled for us in the
brook that penetrated like a happy dream the slumber of the forest that
bordered on the lake. The wooded declivity through which it went was
just enough to keep it ever vocal and animated. Gazing down upon it, it
was clear brown, with glancing gleams of interior green,