or and rags, and great dark eyes, and breathed an odor
by no means of sanctity. The dusky, luminous-eyed people seemed to move,
and breathe, and hold a constant bazaar in the lane-like streets filled
with everything known and unknown in merchandise, or leaning out from
the windows of the tottering houses, their arms crossed over the sill,
to dream away a lifetime. Still there was a fascination about it all, a
suggestion of vagabondism, of Ishmaelitish wanderings, of having "here
no continuing city," that touched the heart of a certain Methodist
minister's daughter in our party.

Sometimes the houses rise directly from the water, as did our hotel, the
entrance being gained from another street in front. Our room was like a
town hall, with mediaeval bed furniture and sofa, high chest of drawers,
and great round table that might have come in with the Dutch when they
took Holland. The deep windows looked down upon a canal. Across from
them, anchored to the quay as if for a lifetime, was one of the river
boats. Early in the morning the wife of the skipper--a square woman,
brown-faced, with faded, braided hair--ran out bareheaded into the town,
coming back with her arms mysteriously full. Down into the cabin she
disappeared, from whence directly came a sound of sputtering and frying,
with a most savory odor. Up she would come again--frying pan in hand to
corroborate her statement--to call her husband to breakfast. He was
never ready to respond, never, though he was doing nothing to support
his energetic family at the time, but coiling and uncoiling old ropes,
or rubbing at invisible spots with a handful of rope-yarn. I know he
only delayed to add to his own dignity and the importance of his final
advent. Breakfast over, there followed such a commotion in the little
world as I cannot describe--a shaking out of garments, a scraping out of
plates, and throwing into the canal the refuse of the feast, a flying up
with pots and pans for no object whatever but to clatter down again with
the same, and all in the face and eyes of the town, with nevertheless
the most absorbed and unconscious air imaginable. When it was over,
somewhat what red in the face, but serene, the wife would appear upon
the deck, to sit in the shadow of a sail and mend her husband's
stockings, or put on a needed patch. We left the boat still fast to the
quay; but I know that some day, when it was filled with scented oils,
and rouge, and borax, and all the other th