ly free the moment he wishes to be so. With such
hosts, pleasure may be combined with repose. They lived on the bank
opposite the town, and, as their house was full, we slept in the
town, and passed three days with them, passing to and fro morning and
evening in their boats. To one of these, called the Fairy, in which a
sweet little daughter of the house moved about lighter than any Scotch
Ellen ever sung, I should indite a poem, if I had not been guilty of
rhyme on this very page. At morning this boating was very pleasant; at
evening, I confess, I was generally too tired with the excitements of
the day to think it so.

The house--a double log-cabin--was, to my eye, the model of a Western
villa. Nature had laid out before it grounds which could not be
improved. Within, female taste had veiled every rudeness, availed
itself of every sylvan grace.

In this charming abode what laughter, what sweet thoughts, what
pleasing fancies, did we not enjoy! May such never desert those who
reared it, and made us so kindly welcome to all its pleasures!

Fragments of city life were dexterously crumbled into the dish
prepared for general entertainment. Ice-creams followed the dinner,
which was drawn by the gentlemen from the river, and music and
fireworks wound up the evening of days spent on the Eagle's Nest. Now
they had prepared a little fleet to pass over to the Fourth of July
celebration, which some queer drumming and fifing, from, the opposite
bank, had announced to be "on hand."

We found the free and independent citizens there collected beneath the
trees, among whom many a round Irish visage dimpled at the usual puffs
of "Ameriky."

The orator was a New-Englander, and the speech smacked loudly
of Boston, but was received with much applause and followed by a
plentiful dinner, provided by and for the Sovereign People, to which
Hail Columbia served as grace.

Returning, the gay flotilla cheered the little flag which the children
had raised from a log-cabin, prettier than any president ever saw,
and drank the health of our country and all mankind, with a clear
conscience.

Dance and song wound up the day. I know not when the mere local
habitation has seemed to me to afford so fair a chance of happiness as
this. To a person of unspoiled tastes, the beauty alone would afford
stimulus enough. But with it would be naturally associated all kinds
of wild sports, experiments, and the studies of natural history. In
these regards,