seemed to emit her steam in more leisurely whiffs, as one puffs one's cigar in a contemplative walk through the forest. Dick, the pole-man-a man of marvelous fine functions when we shall presently come to 65 the short, narrow curves-lay asleep on the guards, in great peril of rolling into the river over the three inches between his length and the edge; the people of the boat moved not, and spoke not; the white crane, the curlew, the limpkin, the heron, the water70 turkey, were scarcely disturbed in their quiet avocations as we passed, and quickly succeeded in persuading themselves after each momentary excitement of our gliding by that we were really after all no monster, but only some day-dream of a mon75 ster. The stream, which in its broader stretches reflected the sky so perfectly that it seemed a riband of heaven bound in lovely doublings along the breast of the land, now began to narrow: the blue of heaven disappeared, and the green of the over80 leaning trees assumed its place. The lucent current lost all semblance of water. It was simply a distillation of many-shaded foliages, smoothly sweeping along beneath us. It was green trees, fluent. One felt that a subtle amalgamation and mutual 85 give-and-take had been effected between the natures of water and leaves. A certain sense of pellucidness seemed to breathe coolly out of the woods on either side of us; and the glassy dream of a forest over which we sailed appeared to send up exhalations of 90 balms and odors and stimulant pungencies.

"Look at that snake in the water!" said a gentleman, as we sat on deck with the engineer, just

come up from his watch. The engineer smiled. "Sir, it is a water-turkey," he said gently.

The water-turkey is the most preposterous bird 95 within the range of ornithology. He is not a bird, he is a neck, with such subordinate rights, members, appurtenances and hereditaments thereunto appertaining as seem necessary to that end. He has just enough stomach to arrange nourishment for his 100 neck, just enough wings to fly painfully along with his neck, and just big enough legs to keep his neck from dragging on the ground; and his neck is light colored, while the rest of him is black. When he saw us he jumped up on a limb and stared. Then 105 suddenly he dropped into the water, sank like a leaden ball out of sight, and made us think he was drowned-when presently the tip of his beak appeared, then the length of his neck lay along the surface of the water, and in this position, with his 110 body submerged, he shot out his neck, drew it back, wriggled it, twisted it, twiddled it, and spirally poked it into the east, the west, the north, and the south, with a violence of involution and a contortionary energy that made one think in the same 115 breath of corkscrews and of lightnings. But what nonsense! All that labor and perilous asphyxiation --for a beggarly sprat or a couple of inches of watersnake!

But I make no doubt he would have thought us as 120 absurd as we him if he could have seen us taking our breakfast a few minutes later: for as we sat there, some half-dozen men at table, all that sombre melancholy which comes over the American at his

125 meals descended upon us; no man talked, each of us could hear the other crunch his bread in faucibus, and the noise thereof seemed in the ghostly stillness like the noise of earthquakes and of crashing worlds; even the furtive glances towards each other's plates 130 were presently awed down to a sullen gazing of each into his own; the silence increased, the noises became intolerable, a cold sweat broke out over at least one of us, he felt himself growing insane, and rushed out to the deck with a sigh as of one saved 135 from a dreadful death by social suffocation.

There is a certain position a man can assume on board the steamer Marion which constitutes an attitude of perfect rest, and leaves one's body in such blessed ease that one's soul receives the heav140 enly influences of the Ocklawaha sail absolutely without physical impediment.

Know, therefore, tired friend that shall hereafter ride

up the Ocklawaha on the Marion-whose name I would fain call Legion-that if you will place a 145 chair just in the narrow passage-way which runs alongside the cabin, at the point where this passageway descends by a step to the open space in front of the pilot-house, on the left-hand side facing to the bow, you will perceive a certain slope in the railing 150 where it descends by an angle of some thirty degrees

to accommodate itself to the step aforesaid; and this slope should be in such a position as that your left leg unconsciously stretches itself along the same by the pure insinuating solicitations of the fitness of 155 things, and straightway dreams itself off into an Elysian tranquillity. You should then tip your

chair in a slightly diagonal position back to the side of the cabin, so that your head will rest thereagainst, your right arm will hang over the chairback, and your left arm will repose on the railing. 160 I give no specific instruction for your right leg, because I am disposed to be liberal in this matter and to leave some gracious scope for personal idiosyncrasies as well as a margin of allowance for the accidents of time and place; dispose your right leg, 165 therefore, as your heart may suggest, or as all the precedent forces of time and the universe may have combined to require you.

Having secured this attitude, open wide the eyes of your body and of your soul; repulse with a 170 heavenly suavity the conversational advances of the drummer who fancies he might possibly sell you a bill of white goods and notions, as well as the polite in-. quiries of the real-estate person who has his little private theory that you are in search of an orange- 175 grove to purchase; then sail, sail, sail, through the cypresses, through the vines, through the May day, through the floating suggestions of the unutterable that come up, that sink down, that waver and sway hither and thither; and so shall you have revelations 180 of rest, and so shall your heart forever afterwards interpret Ocklawaha to mean repose.

Some twenty miles from the mouth of the Ocklawaha, at the right-hand edge of the stream, is the handsomest residence in America. It belongs to a 185 certain alligator of my acquaintance, a very honest and worthy saurian, of good repute. A little cove of water, dark green under the overhanging leaves,

placid, pellucid, curves round at the river edge into 190 the flags and lilies, with a curve just heart-breaking for the pure beauty of the flexure of it. This house of my saurian is divided into apartments-little subsidiary bays which are scalloped out by the lilypads according to the sinuous fantasies of their 195 growth. My saurian, when he desires to sleep, has but to lie down anywhere: he will find marvelous mosses for his mattress beneath him; his sheets will be white lily-petals; and the green disks of the lily-pads will straightway embroider themselves to200 gether above him for his coverlet. He never quarrels with his cook, he is not the slave of a kitchen, and his one house-maid-the stream-forever sweeps his chamber clean. His conservatories there under the glass of that water are ever and without labor 205 filled with the enchantments of strange under-water growths; his parks and his pleasure-grounds are bigger than any king's. Upon my saurian's house the winds have no power, the rains are only a new delight to him, and the snows he will never see. 210 Regarding fire, as he does not employ its slavery, so he does not fear its tyranny. Thus, all the elements are the friends of my saurian's house. While he sleeps he is being bathed. What glory to awake sweetened and freshened by the sole careless act of 215 sleep!

Lastly, my saurian has unnumbered mansions, and can change his dwelling as no human householder may; it is but a fillip of his tail, and lo! he is established in another place as good as the last, ready 220 furnished to his liking.