see little men running about her deck, and sails rise
magically and catch the breeze, and you put in on dirty nights at snug
harbours which are unknown to the lordly yachts. Night passes in a
twink, and again your rakish craft noses for the wind, whales spout,
you glide over buried cities, and have brushes with pirates, and cast
anchor on coral isles. You are a solitary boy while all this is taking
place, for two boys together cannot adventure far upon the Round Pond,
and though you may talk to yourself throughout the voyage, giving
orders and executing them with despatch, you know not, when it is time
to go home, where you have been or what swelled your sails; your
treasure-trove is all locked away in your hold, so to speak, which will
be opened, perhaps, by another little boy many years afterwards.

But those yachts have nothing in their hold. Does any one return to
this haunt of his youth because of the yachts that used to sail it? Oh
no. It is the stick-boat that is freighted with memories. The yachts
are toys, their owner a fresh-water mariner; they can cross and recross
a pond only while the stick-boat goes to sea. You yachtsmen with your
wands, who think we are all there to gaze on you, your ships are only
accidents of this place, and were they all to be boarded and sunk by
the ducks, the real business of the Round Pond would be carried on as
usual.

Paths from everywhere crowd like children to the pond. Some of them
are ordinary paths, which have a rail on each side, and are made by men
with their coats off, but others are vagrants, wide at one spot, and at
another so narrow that you can stand astride them. They are called
Paths that have Made Themselves, and David did wish he could see them
doing it. But, like all the most wonderful things that happen in the
Gardens, it is done, we concluded, at night after the gates are closed.
We have also decided that the paths make themselves because it is their
only chance of getting to the Round Pond.

One of these gypsy paths comes from the place where the sheep get their
hair cut. When David shed his curls at the hair-dressers, I am told,
he said good-bye to them without a tremor, though his mother has never
been quite the same bright creature since; so he despises the sheep as
they run from their shearer, and calls out tauntingly, 'Cowardy,
cowardy custard!' But when the man grips them between his legs David
shakes a fist at him for using such big scissor