church tower comes in sight. Under its shadow Fred Walker lies buried near the river he loved in life. Within the church a tablet is set up in his honor in the west wall, and a laurel wreath hangs beneath. But over his grave only a gray stone, like those one sees in all English country graveyards, is erected to his memory, and that of his mother and brother. At the Ferry Hotel at Cookham we unpacked our boat and ceased to be travelers, to become, with the many on the water, pleasure-seekers of a day. Anglers no longer slept on the banks, but were alert to order us out of their way if we drew too near. In every houseboat, in every steam launch, was a gay party. Along the beautiful stretch between Marlow and Cookham, beneath the steep wooded slopes of Cliefden,- where here and there the cedars and beeches leave a space to show the great house of the Duke of Westminster rising far above, its gray façade in fine perspective against the sky,- up the near back-waters winding between sedge and willow, one to a mill, another to

a row of eel-bucks, the name of the smaller boats was legion. Among them was every possible kind of rowboat, and there were punts, some with one some with two at the pole, dinghies, sail-boats, even a gondola and two sandolas, and canoes with single paddle, canoes with double paddles, and one at least with an entire family on their knees paddling as if from the wilds of America or Africa. On the Thames it seems as if no man is too old, no child too young, to take a paddle, a pole, or a scull. In one boat you find a gray-haired grandfather perhaps, in the next a little girl in short frocks and big sun-bonnet.

The locks were more crowded than usual, and on

their banks men waited with baskets of fruit and flowers. In one we sunk to the bottom to the music of the "Brav' Général," and the musicians, when there was no escape, let down the lock-keeper's long boathook with a bag at the end for pennies.

But it was outside Boulter's Lock, on the way back to Cookham, that we found the greatest crowd. There was such a mass of boats one might have thought all

The men who haunt the waters,
Broad of breast and brown of hue,
All of Beauty's youngest daughters,
Perched in punt or crank canoe,

were waiting to pass through together. But presently the lock-keeper called out, "Keep back! There are a lot of boats coming!" and the lock gates slowly opened and out they came, pell-mell, pushing, paddling, poling, steaming, and there was great scrambling, and bumping, and meeting of friends, and cries of "How are you?" "Come to dinner at eight," "Look out where you 're going!" and brandishing of boathooks, and glaring of eyes, and savage shoutings, and frantic handshakings, and scrunching of boats, and scratching of paint, and somehow we all made our way into the lock as best we could, the lock-keeper helping the slower boats with his long boathook and fitting all in until there was not space for one to capsize if it would. But indeed in a crowded lock if you cannot manage your own boat some one else will manage it for you; and, for that matter, when there is no crowd you meet men whose only use of a boathook is to dig it into your boat as you are quietly making your way out. Both banks were lined with people looking on, for Boulter's Lock on Sunday afternoon is one of the sights of the Thames.

When the upper gates opened there was again pushing and scrambling, and it was not until we were out of the long cut and under the Cliefden heights that we could pull with care. The boats kept passing long after we had got back to Cookham and while we lingered in the hotel garden. Almost the last were the sandolas and the gondola, and as we watched them, with the white figures of the men at the oar outlined against the pale sky and bending in slow, rythmic motion, we understood why these boats are so much more picturesque than the

RUNNYMEDE.

punt, the action of the gondolier so much finer than that of the punter. The entire figure rises above the boat, and there is no pause in the rhythm of the motion. In a punt the man at the pole, except in the upper reaches near Oxford, stands not above but in the boat; and fine as is his action when he draws the pole from the water and plunges it in again, the interval when he pushes on it or walks with it is not so graceful. To know the punt at its very best you should see it in a race, when the action of the punter is as continuous as that of the gondolier.

Gradually the launches began to hang out their lights, the row of house-boats opposite Cookham Church lighted their lamps and Japanese lanterns, making a bright illumination in one corner, and "when the evening mist clothed the riverside with poetry as with a veil" "all sensible people" turned their backs upon it and went in to dinner.

After Cookham there is history enough to be learned from the guidebook for those who care for it: scandalous as you pass under

Cliefden's proud alcove,

The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and of love;

stirring about Maidenhead, where the conspiracy of Harley bore some of its good fruit; mainly ecclesiastical at Bray, where lived the famous Vicar, who never faltered in his faith unless the times required it:

And this is the law that I'll maintain

Until my dying day, sir,

That whatsoever king shall reign
Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir.

He showed his good taste. The village is as charming when you first see from the river the long lines of poplars and the church tower overlooking a row of eel-bucks as when you wander through the streets to the old brick almshouse with the quaintly clipped trees in front and the statue of the founder over the door. For the first time in our river experience there was not a room to be had in the village. At least so the landlady of the George on the river bank told us, while she struggled with her h's. She advised us to try the H-h-hind's H-h-head in the village. We did, but with no success. Now was the time to unfold our canvas and put up in our own hotel. Instead, we dropped downstream in search of an inn where we would not have to make our own beds and do our own cooking.

Between Bray and Boveney Locks is the swiftest stream on the river, and we saw only one boat being towed, and another sculled with apparently hard work up past Monkey Island, where the Duke of Marlborough's painted monkeys, which give the island its name, are said still to climb the walls of his pleasure house.

The river flowed in long reaches and curves between shores where there was little to note. But as we passed Queen's Island we saw, gradually coming into view on the horizon, the great gray mass of Windsor Castle. We lost sight of it when, with a turn of the stream, we came to Surly, where the Eton boys end their famous 4th of June, and to little Boveney Church, shut in by a square of trees much as a Normandy farm is inclosed. Just before the lock the castle was again in front of us, nearer now and more massive. But hardly had we seen it when it went behind the trees. Below the lock dozens of boats and many swans with them were on the water; not the crowd we had left at Maidenhead, however. Men sculled in stiff hats and shirt-sleeves. Parties were being pulled instead of pulling themselves. Soldiers, their little caps still stuck on their heads, but their elegance taken off with their coats, tumbled about in old tubs: once in the midst of them a crew of eight, spick and span as if for a parade and coached by an officer, passed in a long racing-boat.

The banks, where fishermen sat, grew higher and more commonplace; one or two little back-waters

quietly joined the main stream. A long railway embankment stretched across the plain. The river carried us under a great archway, and just before us Windsor towered, grand and impressive, from its hill looking down upon river and town. The veil of soft smoke over the roofs at its foot seemed to lift it far above them, a symbol of that gulf fixed between royalty and the people.

Rain began to fall as we drew up to a hotel on the Eton side, just opposite to where the castle "stands on tiptoe to behold the fair and goodly Thames."

In the town we could forget the river, so seldom did we see the river uniform, so often did we meet tourists with red Baedekers. In the hotel we could as easily forget the town, for here we overlooked the water and the passing boats. Even when it was so dark that we could no longer see them, we could hear the whistle of the steam launches, the dipping in time of many sculls, and the cries of coxswains.

The morning we left Windsor was brilliant with sunshine. Near Romney Lock the red walls and gray chapel of Eton came in sight, and when we looked back it was to see a corner of Windsor Castle framed in by the trees that line the narrow cut. Beyond the lock were the beautiful Eton playing-fields, where crowds meet on the 4th of June; and next Datchet and Datchet Mead, where Falstaff was thrown for foul clothes into the river; and Windsor Park, where the sun went under the clouds and down came the rain in torrents. At the first drop all the boats disappeared. The minute before a girl had been poling downstream at our very side. Now she

had gone as mysteriously as the Vanishing Lady. We,

not understanding the trick, kept calmly on our way and were none the worse for our ducking. And when the sun shone again the boats all reappeared as suddenly. One cannot tell in words how the river, with the first bit of sunshine, like the Venetian lagoons, becomes filled with life.

At Old Windsor the weir seemed to us much the most dangerous we had come to, and the lock by far the most dilapidated. After we left the

lock we passed the yellow bow-windowed Bells of Ousely, an inn famous I hardly know for what, its sign hanging from one of the wide-branching elms that overshadow it; and Magna Charta Island, where the barons claimed the rights which they have kept all for themselves ever since, and where two or three pleasure parties were picnicking, and a private house stands on the spot so sacred to English liberty; opposite, those who to-day are its defenders were playing at making a pontoon-bridge, and the field was dotted with red coats and white tents. Below was Runnymede, a broad meadow at the foot of a beautiful hillside, where the great fight was fought.

At Bell Weir Lock the gates were closed. Too many barges had crowded in from the lower side, and the last had to back out, an operation which took much time and more talk. A boat-load of campers pulled up while we waited.

"Back water, Stroke!" cried the man at the bow, who had a glass screwed in one eye. "Easy now! Bring her in! Look out where you 're going!" And with his glass fixed upon Stroke, he quite forgot to look out where he was going himself, and bang went the bow into a post and over he tumbled into a heap of tents and bags at the bottom of the boat. When he got up the glass was still there, as it apparently had been for several weeks, for we had seen the party going upstream when we were at Sonning. They had probably been to the top of the Thames and were on their way back, but they had not yet learned to manage a boat. When the gates at last opened Stroke saw some young ladies on shore, and at once put his pipe in his mouth and his hands into the pockets of his blue and black blazer, and struck an attitude, and Bow gave orders in vain. The boat swung from one side of the lock to the other and still he posed. However, we had the worst of it in coming out. For in trying to clear the waiting barge we ran aground and stuck there ignominiously, while VOL. XXXVIII.-65.

all the boats that had been behind us in the lock went by. But it was not much work to push off again, and almost at once we were in Staines.

The town is thought to be the rival of Reading in ugliness, an eyesore on the Thames. We minded this but little, for we spent the evening sitting at a table in the garden of the Pack Horse, watching the never-ceasing procession of boats- the punt with the two small boys come to meet their father after his day in London; the racing punts; the long, black canoe, either the Minnehaha or the Hiawatha (we were too far to see its name); the picnic parties coming home with empty hampers; the sail-boats; the ferry punt, where now and then an energetic man in flannels took the pole from the ferryman and sent the punt zigzagging through the water, but somehow, and in the course of time, always got to the other side. And if an ugly railway bridge crossed the river just here, we could look under it to the still busier ferry, where the punt, crossing every minute, was so crowded with gay dresses and flannels that one might have thought all Staines had been for an outing. The sun set behind the dense trees on the opposite bank, its light shining between their trunks and the dark reflections; moonlight lay on the water, and still we sat there. We could understand our landlord when he told us that, though he had traveled far and wide, there was no place he cared for as he did for Staines. Like his wife and the pile of trunks at the head of the stairs, he had an unmistakable theatrical look. Later he went into the bar and played the violin, and people gathered about the tables while he gave now a Czardas, now the last London Music Hall song. The evening was the liveliest we spent upon the river.

A fine Scotch mist fell the next morning. Of the first part of the day's voyage there was not much to remember but gray banks, a gray river, and an occasional fishing-punt with umbrellas in a row. In our depression we forgot when we passed Laleham that the village has become a place of pilgrimage. Matthew Arnold lies buried in its churchyard, and perhaps he, who hated the parade of death, would rather have the traveler pass his grave without heeding it than stop to drop a sentimental tear.

At Chertsey the mist rose and our spirits with it. We had arrived just in time for the Chertsey regatta, and when presently the sun struggled through the clouds, as if by magic the river was crowded with boats. The races were not worth seeing. The men sculled in their vests, poled in their suspenders. Punts at the start got so hopelessly entangled that spectators roared with laughter. But there was an attempt to do the thing as at Henley. Between the races, canoes and punts and skiffs went up and down the racecourse, and the people in the two house-boats received their friends and tea was made. Among the lookers-on, at least, costumes were correct.

ROLLERS AT MOULSEY.

From the river, Chertsey was so pretty and gay, we did not go into the town, which Dickens says is dull and quiet, even to hunt for the humble nest where Cowley

'Scaped all the toils that life molest,
And its superfluous joys,

or the near mansion where Fox raised his turnips.

We neared Shepperton Lock as the sun was going down. Just below the long straggling village of Weybridge was hidden round a corner of the river at the mouth of the Wey. Close by another little stream and a canal join the Thames, and their waters meet in the weir pool, which was a broad sheet of light when we first saw it. At the landing-place of the Lincoln Arms lay the usual mass of boats, but almost all were marked with monograms repeated on every scull and paddle, and on the road above carriages with liveried footmen waited. The little river Wey runs to Guildford and still farther through the fair county of Surrey, and on its banks, not far from Weybridge, lived the rollicking, frolicking, jolly old monks whose legend is said to drive away sentiment as suddenly as a north wind scatters sea-fog. But after all, if you turned from the Thames to explore every stream rich in story and in beauty, you would never get down to London. Besides, on the Wey there are locks every hour or less, and at almost all you must be your own lock-keeper and carry your tools with you, and there are those who say the pleasure is not worth the work.

From Weybridge to Walton is the neighborhood abounding with memories of olden time,