A SUMMER AFTERNOON 135 
original barge, we could not command such a 
burst of enthusiasm as when the young men 
shot by us in their race-boat ; but then, as one 
of the girls justly remarked, we remained longer 
in sight. 
And many a day, since promotion to a swifter 
craft, have they rowed with patient stroke 
down the lovely lake, still attended by their 
guide, philosopher, and coxswain, — along banks 
where herds of young birch-trees overspread 
the sloping valley, and ran down beneath a 
blaze of sunshine to the rippling water, —or 
through the Narrows, where some breeze 
rocked the boat till trailing shawls and ribbons 
were water-soaked, and the bold little foam 
would even send a daring drop over the gun- 
wale, to play at ocean, — or to Davis’s Cottage, 
where a whole parterre of lupines bloomed to 
the water’s edge, as if relics of some ancient 
garden bower of a forgotten race,—or to the 
dam by Lily Pond, there to hunt among the 
stones for snakes’ eggs, each empty shell cut 
crosswise, where the young creatures had made 
their first fierce bite into the universe outside, 
—or to some island, where white violets 
bloomed fragrant and lonely, separated by re- 
lentless breadths of water from their shore- 
born sisters, until mingled in their visitors’ 
bouquets, —then up the lake homeward again 
