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The enjoyments of the unreasoning part of us cannot be defended on grounds of reason, and experience shows that men who are all logic and morals, and have nothing of the animal left in them, are poor creatures after all. Any way, I defy philosophy with a twenty-pound salmon fast hooked, and a pool right ahead four hundred yards long and half full of water-lilies.
So I did my best to take her at her word, and tried impressionist sketches of the charming and ever-changing scene, upon which her presence was the sole blot; the beautiful old houses set back from the river on flowery lawns, faded coats-of-arms glowing red and blue and gold over quaint doorways shaded by splendid trees; fairy villas rising from billows of pink peonies and green hydrangeas; humble cottages, with tiny window-panes of twinkling glass, shining out from bowers of late roses; dove-gray windmills beckoning across piles of golden hay; above, clouds like flocks of snowy sheep, racing along wide sky-pastures, blue with the blue of forget-me-nots; below, a crystal flood foaming white with water-lilies that dipped before the prow of our advancing boat.
No, nothing except birds and trees, water-lilies and such like happenings, ever happens along the old canal; and our nearest to a human event was our meeting with a lonely, melancholy man, sitting near a moss-grown water-wheel, smoking a corn-cob pipe, and gazing wistfully across at the Ramapo Hills, over which great sunlit clouds were billowing and casting slow-moving shadows.
Then, just as the hour fell when he was used to meet his love, his heart broke, and he joined her in the spiritland. A little maid of three years was missing from her home on the Genesee. She had gone to gather water-lilies and did not return.
So long as Theron remained in the camp, the image of the kiss, which was enshrined in his heart and ministered to by all his thoughts, continued enveloped in a haze of sylvan mystery, like a dryad. Suggestions of its beauty and holiness came to him in the odors of the woodland, at the sight of wild flowers and water-lilies.
She never came to the house without bringing flowers to the latter not only beautiful exotics from the florists, but wreaths of clematis, bunches of meadow-rue from her rambles, and water-lilies and cardinal-flowers from boating excursions up the Moodna Creek and the secluded invalid enjoyed her brilliant beauty and piquant ways as if she had been a rare flower herself.
The lakes and ponds were gay with yellow water-lilies, and the air was musical with the sweet cries of wildfowl; while the noon-tide sun bathed the whole in a golden glory. The effect of such a sight on our wanderers was at first too powerful for words, and when words did burst forth they served to show how wonderfully diverse are the spirits of men.
There capital sits like a bull-frog hidden behind water-lilies, refusing to budge. Hence the way to restore prosperity is not to multiply government departments and government expenditures, nor to appoint commissions and to pile up debts, but to start going again the machinery of bold productive effort.
The pools are clothed with water-lilies and inhabited by eels, and I generally take a netful of writhing eels back with me to the Man of Wrath to pacify him after my prolonged absence.
It was a plain little church, with unpainted pews; but the windows looked forth upon a green mountain-side, and whispers of oaks and pines and river-music crept in, and the breath of sweet water-lilies, heaped in a great bowl upon the communion-table of common stained cherry-wood, floated up and filled the place.
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