a short trip to the Lake of the Isles, a
lovely place, where instead of boats full of gigglin' girls with
parasols, and college boys with yells and oars, the water lilies float
their white perfumed sails, and Serenity and Loneliness seem to kinder
drift the boat onwards, and the fashion-tired beholder loves to hasten
there, away from the crowd, and rest.

Every mind can be suited at the Islands, the devotee of fashion can
swirl around in its vortex, and for them who don't care for it there
are beautiful quiet places where that vortex don't foam and geyser
round, and all crowned with the ineffable beauty of the St. Lawrence.

And we sailed by the Island of Summer Land (a good name), where a
beloved pastor and his children in the meetin' house settled down so
long ago that Fashion hadn't found out how beautiful the Thousand
Islands wuz. They come here for rest and recreation, and built their
cottages along the undulatin' shore in the shape of a great letter S.
It wuz a pretty spot.

When the boat wuz ready to go back at night I wuz, and wuz conveyed in
safety at about six p.m. to the bosom of my family. I say this
poetically, for the bosom wuzn't there when I got back; it hadn't come
in from fishin' yet, and when it did come it wuz cross and fraxious,
for the other deacon had caught two fish and he hadn't any. He said he
felt sick, and believed he wuz threatened with numony, but he wuzn't;
it wuz only madness and crossness, that kinder stuffs anybody up some
like tizik.

Well, Whitfield found a letter that made it necessary for him to
return to Jonesville to once, and of course Tirzah Ann, like the fond
wife and mother she wuz, would take little Delight and go with him.
But after talkin' to Josiah, Whitfield concluded they would stay over
one day more to go fishin'. So the very next mornin' he got a big
roomy boat, and we sot out to troll for fish. The way they do this is
to hitch a line on behind the boat and let it drag through the water
and catch what comes to it. And as our boat swep' on over the glassy
surface of the water that lay shinin' so smooth and level, not hintin'
of the rocks and depths below, I methought, "Here we be all on us, men
and wimmen, fishin' on the broad sea of life, and who knows what will
tackle the lines we drop down into the mysterious depths? We sail
along careless and onthinkin' over rush and rapid, depth and shallow,
the line draggin' along. Who knows what we may feel all of a sudden on