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Houseboating was taking us into strange places. And yet what a comfortable way to journey into the world in the rough! Many are the advantages of houseboating over camping or any other form of outing. In a floating home one goes into the wild without sacrificing the comforts or even the essential refinements of life. For women it is an ideal way to visit Dame Nature.
Often it is necessary so to hobble your floating home where there is danger of her swinging upon hidden obstructions; but it is hard on the poetry of houseboating. To be held in one position, with unvarying scenes in your windows, is too much like living in a prosaic land home set immovable in sameness.
The days rolled on in ever-changing scenes of beauty; the nights, star-gemmed and mystic, were filled with music and the witchery of the sea. It made good reading. It made altogether too good reading. We did not see that then. We did not know that most of the literature of houseboating is the work of people with plenty of imagination and no houseboats. We resolved to build a houseboat.
Rick's bandages had been reduced to a single jumbo-size gauze patch, but his folks would not allow him to go swimming until his face was entirely healed. He knew they were right, though he chafed under the restriction. Even so, swimming was really only a small part of the fun of houseboating, and the ban on swimming wouldn't last long.
In its glow we could scarcely credit our own recollections of some wintry bits of houseboating; and as to that story in our note-books about our being ice-bound in Eppes Creek, it was too much to ask ourselves to believe a word of it. In colonial times there were a number of fine homes along this part of the James, but most of them have long since disappeared.
It was a most fetching production with a picture that appealed to every overwrought nerve. That article opened a new field for our consideration. Landlubbers of the landlubbers though we were, its water-gypsy charm yet sank deep. We thirsted for more. We haunted the libraries until we had exhausted the literature of houseboating. And what a dangerously attractive literature we found!
And, over and above all this, is the fact that miserably pitching and rolling about in grim battle with the elements is not houseboating. It is easy then to see that snug harbours count for much when cruising in the true spirit of houseboating, and in the charming, awkward tubs that make the best and the most lovable of houseboats.
As we stood amidst ruins and building stuff, we tried to bear in mind that, of the two pilgrims, the unimaginative one is much the bigger; but we were so hopelessly a part of the other fellow. For two or three days after our visit to the church ruins, rain kept us prisoners within the houseboat. Such times are good tests to determine how much one possesses of the houseboating spirit.
But more significant than leafless trees was the luxuriant holly with its ripe, red berries, gayly ready for Christmas decorations and to grace the birth of a new year. And yet, these were among the most glorious days for houseboating: tonic days with a hint of winter in the chill, crisp air, and dreamy days with a lingering of summer in the sun's warm glow.
For, to our minds, one of the chief charms of houseboating lay in poking about in such out-of-the-way places. Let the yacht reign supreme as the deep-water pleasure craft, that trails its elegance perforce ever up and down the same prescribed channels.
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