W

E have fallen so much into the habit of being always busy, in these latter days, that we hardly know how to go about a quiet vacation. Our business tags after us into the midst of our pleasure, and we are ill at ease when we are beyond reach of the telegraph and the daily newspaper. We toil amazingly to keep ourselves informed about a multitude of things, like European politics, and the state of the weather all around the world, and the marriages of very rich people, and the latest novelties in crime, which are really of slight interest to us. We are forever trying to put something more into those scrap-bags of knowledge which we fondly call our minds, and seldom rest tranquil long enough to find out whether there is anything already in them, any native feeling, any real thought, which would like to come out and sun itself for a while.

Even our amusements keep us on the

We follow them remorselessly, determined to wring from them the very last drop of excitement and profit. And so the season of rest is infected with the spirit of toil, and we peg away at our vacations desperately.

Well, perhaps the picture is a little bit overdrawn. Perhaps we are not all of us quite so far gone in the business habit that we cannot get out of it for a few weeks to rest our souls. But I am sure that most of us need some help and encouragement in accomplishing this happy release. One of the first things that we want in our vacations is a teacher of carelessness, a professor of ease, like those light-hearted birds and untoiling flowers which the Wisest of all masters commended to his disciples.

For my own part, I have always found that a small, pleasant stream is the best instructor in the art of living without anxious thought. There is something in its quiet, contented fashion of slipping through the world that lays a spell of peacefulness upon my heart. It flashes merrily in the rapids, but it is no less happy in its loitering through the long, still pools. There is no place in the world where the trees, and the overhanging flowers, and the high blue sky, and the journeying stars, are so beautifully reflected as in its calm bosom. And the sound of its voice is the slumber-song of To many such streams I am a

care.

grateful debtor; and to one of them I would now acknowledge the obligations which I can never repay, by inditing its praise and concealing its name.

It is a lazy, idle brook on the south shore of Long Island. There is not a mill, nor a factory, nor a reservoir on all its course of a short mile. The only profitable thing it ever tried to do was to make a small ice-pond at its mouth; but the ice, being mixed with weeds and slightly flavored with brackish water, was so little relished that the enterprise came to nothing.

It was through this unprofitable icepond, which emptied by a short tide-way, under a wooden bridge, into a sleepy corner of the Great South Bay-it was through this unpromising introduction that we entered upon our acquaintance with the brook. We had a house, some two miles away, down the bay; but it was a very small house, and the room that we liked best was out-of doors. Sailing past the wooden bridge on one of our aimless voyages, we observed the water flowing out into the bay, and reflected that we had nothing better to do than to find out where it came from. Many of the pleasant experiences of life would be missed if we were not sometimes ready to accept these silent invitations. The next day my lady Graygown and I set out in a rowboat, pushed through the passage beneath the bridge, crossed the weedy pond, and made our way into the brook.

It was quite broad at first- -a hundred feet from side to side-bordered with flags and rushes and feathery meadow-grasses. The channel meandered sluggishly in sweeping curves from side to side of the estuary, and the water, except in the swifter current, was encumbered with an amazing quantity of some aquatic moss. The woods came straggling down on either bank; there were fallen trees in the water; and here and there an old swamp-maple, ragged and gray-bearded, hung out over the stream which was undermining it. But for the most part the brook lay wide open to the sky, and the tide, rising and falling somewhat irregularly in the pond below, made curious alternations in its depth and in the swiftness of its flow.

For about a third of a mile we navigated this bright little river, and then we

could row the boat no further, for we came to a place where the stream issued with a strong flood from an archway in a thicket. The portal was not more than four feet wide, and the interlaced branches of the trees met closely overhead. Stooping down, we pushed the boat through the opening, and found ourselves in the Fairy Dell. It was a long, narrow bower, say four or five hundred feet from end to end, with the brook running through it in a joyous, rapid current over a bed of c'ean white sand and shining pebbles. There were deep holes at the corners where you could hardly touch bottom with an oar, and shallow places in the straight runs where the boat would barely float. Not a ray of sunlight leaked through the green leafy roof; and all along the banks there were delicate mosses, and tall ferns, and wildwood flowers that love the shade.

At the end of this bower our progress was stopped by a low bridge, on a forgotten road that crossed the pine woods at this point. Here I left my lady Graygown with her book, while I set forth to trace the further course of the brook. Above the wood-road there were no more fairy dells, nor easy-going estuaries. The stream came down through the most complicated piece of undergrowth that I have ever encountered. Alders and wild grapevines and cat-briers made an almost impassable tangle. There was only one way to advance, and that was to wade in the middle of the brook; and it had so many branchings and divisions that I was often at a loss to know which one to follow. It took more than half an hour to go less than a quarter of a mile, and I emerged from this wild and difficult bit of forest with scratched hands and a torn coat to find myself face to face with—a railroad embankment and the afternoon express thundering down to Southampton!

It was a strange and sudden contrast; and at first, I must confess, it seemed like a disenchantment to be reminded so forcibly of the nearness of civilization, with all its cares and duties. But on the voyage home my lady Graygown and I talked it over together, and she brought me around to another and a wiser view of the case. Why should we not make the surprise pleasant rather than disagreeable? Why should we not look at the contrast from the side that we liked best?

Why should we not say that it was a wonderful and delightful thing to discover, in the very midst of civilized life, and midway between two flourishing summer resorts, an untamed brook, with not a single house nor a cultivated field on its banks, and with as much variety and beauty and seclusion in its brief course as if it flowed through miles of trackless forest? Why should we not make it our symbol of liberty, our deliverer from the conventional and commonplace?

And so we did. That lazy, idle brook became to us one of the best of friends; the guide to happiness on many a bright summer day; and, through a series of long vacations, the faithful encourager of indolence.

Indolence in the proper sense of the word, you must understand; for the common meaning which is given to it is altogether false, as Archbishop Trench pointed out in his suggestive book about words. It is just a great big lie to speak of indolence as if it were a vice. It is a virtue. It comes from two Latin words which mean freedom from care and pain. And that is a wholesome state of mind. Under the right conditions and at the right time it is even a good and blessed state of mind. Not to be in a hurry; not to be ambitious, or resentful, or envious of any body; not to be worried about to-day or anxious about to-morrow: that is the way we all ought to feel at some times in our lives; and that is the kind of indolence in which our brook constantly encouraged

us.

It was always luring us away from the artificialities of life into restful companionship with nature. Suppose, for example, we found ourselves growing a bit dissatisfied with the smallness and simplicity of our house, and coveting the splendors of a grander establishment. An afternoon on the brook was a good cure for that folly. Or suppose a day came when there was a threatening prospect of formal calls. We had important business up the brook. Or suppose there were no flowers for the dinner-table. We could easily have gotten them in the vilage; but it was far pleasanter to take the children in the boat and row up the brook and come back with armfuls of white swamp honeysuckle and blue flag, or pink St. John's-wort and sea lavender

and cardinal-flowers. Or suppose that I was very unwisely and reluctantly laboring at some important literary work, and, as it happened, the fish-man had forgotten to bring any fish for supper. Of course I hated to be interrupted; but still duty always comes before pleasure; and so I would get my fly rod and row off across the bay with a perfectly deceptive appearance of cheerfulness, to catch a string of trout in

There! I came within eight letters of telling the name of the brook. But did you ever know a devoted angler who would willingly part with such a secret? If it had been a mere fishless stream, or even if it had been a stream well known to the world as an anglers' resort, then it would not make so much difference if I had let the name slip out. But the presence of trout in this particular brook is a thing which is known to very few, and they guard the knowledge as the dragon guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides. For the trout are large; yes, very large; and there is just one bend in the lower part of the brook where they may be caught. Up in the woods there are smaller ones, from a quarter to a half of a pound in weight, which a man may pick out of the holes with long patience and a short line. But down below there is a stretch of water, say two hundred feet, where there is plenty of room for a long cast, and the big fish lie close in under the bank, with a shelter of floating weeds above them.

I shall never forget the day when I made this discovery. I had been fishing through the tangle above the road and had gotten into the boat, very wet and much disheveled, with four or five moderate trout. It was about sunset, the angler's golden hour, and it occurred to me that I might find a stray fish by drifting down the open stream and casting carefully along shore. In an elbow of the brook there was a space of clear water along the lower side, with two dead trees sticking out from the bank, against which the current had drifted quite a thick mass of weeds. I made a long cast, and sent the fly close to the edge of the weeds. There was a sudden rush, a wake on the shallow water that looked like the wake of a whale, and in a moment a noble fish was fast to the royal coachman fly. He fought furiously to get

back to the shelter of his logs, but the light rod had spring enough in it to hold him away from that dangerous retreat. Then he splurged up and down the open water, and made fierce dashes into the weeds, and seemed about to escape a dozen times. At last he came to the side of the boat, quite played out, and I netted him in my hat. He was one of the most beautiful fish I have ever seen; two pounds and a quarter, plump weight, and colored with brilliant orange and gold, green and crimson and blue. A pair of the same kind, one weighing two pounds and the other a pound and a half were taken by careful fishing down the rest of the pool; and then I rowed home through the dusk, convinced that there is no virtue more pleasantly rewarded than that of the man who unselfishly sallies forth, at the call of duty, to seek food for his perishing family with a fly-rod.

Of course we showed those fish to the neighbors. And of course we did not give precise information as to the place where they were caught. In fact, the description must have been generally misunderstood, for I regret to say that on the following day, which was the Sabbath, there was a row of eager but unprincipled anglers sitting on the bridge over another stream and fishing for trout, with large

expectations and no visible results. The moral of this is obvious.

But we often revisited our indolent brook; and when by chance another boat passed us, we were never fishing, only gathering flowers, or watching the birds, or taking photographs. When the company had gone by, we would set up the rod again and try a few more casts. One day in particular I remember, when Graygown and little Teddy were my comrades. We really had not the slightest intention of angling, for it was clear mid-noon and very hot and still. But suddenly the trout, by one of those freaks which make their disposition so unaccountable and attractive, began to rise all around us. Fortunately the rod was at hand. Graygown and Teddy managed the boat and the landing-net with consummate skill. We landed no less than twelve beauties at that most unlikely hour, and then solemnly shook hands all around as if we had won a great victory.

There is a peculiar pleasure in doing a thing like this-catching trout where nobody thinks of looking for them, and at an hour when everybody says they cannot be caught. It is the pleasure of the unexpected; and shall we not add also, the pleasure of the undeserved? It is a good thing for us to feel, sometimes, that we are