speculators, and religious enthusiasts. No man lives to himself alone,
or builds his cottage for his selfish gratification. He makes fantastic
carpentry, and paints and decorates and illuminates and shows fireworks,
for the genuine sake of display. One marvels that a person should come
here for rest and pleasure in a spirit of such devotion to the public
weal, and devote himself night after night for months to illuminating
his house and lighting up his island, and tearing open the sky with
rockets and shaking the air with powder explosions, in order that the
river may be continually en fete.

At half-past eight the steamer rounded into view of the hotels and
cottages at Alexandria Bay, and the enchanting scene drew all the
passengers to the deck.

The Thousand Islands Hotel, and the Crossman House, where our party
found excellent accommodations, were blazing and sparkling like the
spectacular palaces in an opera scene. Rows of colored lamps were set
thickly along the shore, and disposed everywhere among the rocks on
which the Crossman House stands; lights glistened from all the islands,
from a thousand row-boats, and in all the windows. It was very like
Venice, seen from the lagoon, when the Italians make a gala-night.

If Alexandria Bay was less enchanting as a spectacle by daylight, it was
still exceedingly lovely and picturesque; islands and bays and winding
waterways could not be better combined for beauty, and the structures
that taste or ambition has raised on the islands or rocky points are
well enough in keeping with the general holiday aspect. One of the
prettiest of these cottages is the Bonnicastle of the late Dr. Holland,
whose spirit more or less pervades this region. It is charmingly
situated on a projecting point of gray rocks veined with color,
enlivened by touches of scarlet bushes and brilliant flowers planted in
little spots of soil, contrasting with the evergreen shrubs. It commands
a varied and delicious prospect, and has an air of repose and peace.

I am sorry to say that while Forbes and Miss Lamont floated, so to
speak, in all this beauty, like the light-hearted revelers they were,
King was scarcely in a mood to enjoy it. It seemed to him fictitious and
a little forced. There was no message for him at the Crossman House. His
restlessness and absentmindedness could not escape the observation of
Mrs. Farquhar, and as the poor fellow sadly needed a confidante, she was
soon in possession of his st