as if
nothing had happened for, say, the last three thousand years. That the
immemorial craft of seafaring has no specially 'heroic age'--or that, if
it have, that age is yours--you will discover by watching your own
yachtsman as he moves about lowering foresail and preparing to drop
anchor.

It is a river of gradual golden sunsets, such as Wilson painted--a
broad-bosomed flood between deep and tranquil woods, the main banks
holding here and there a village as in an arm maternally crook'd, but
opening into creeks where the oaks dip their branches in the high tides,
where the stars are glassed all night long without a ripple, and where you
may spend whole days with no company but herons and sandpipers. Even by
the main river each separate figure--the fisherman on the shore, the
ploughman on the upland, the ferryman crossing between them--moves slowly
upon a large landscape, while, permeating all, 'the essential silence
cheers and blesses.' After a week at anchor in the heart of this silence
Cynthia and I compared notes, and set down the total population at fifty
souls; and even so she would have it that I had included the owls.
Lo! the next morning an unaccustomed rocking awoke us in our berths, and,
raising the flap of our dew-drenched awning, we 'descried at sunrise an
emerging prow' of a peculiarly hideous excursion steamboat. She blew no
whistle, and we were preparing to laugh at her grotesque temerity when we
became aware of a score of boats putting out towards her from the shadowy
banks. Like spectres they approached, reached her, and discharged their
complements, until at last a hundred and fifty passengers crowded her
deck. In silence--or in such silence as a paddle-boat can achieve--she
backed, turned, and bore them away: on what festal errand we never
discovered. We never saw them return. For aught I know they may never
have returned. They raised no cheer; no band accompanied them; they
passed without even the faint hum of conversation. In five minutes at
most the apparition had vanished around the river-bend seawards and out of
sight. We stared at the gently heaving water, turned, and caught sight of
Euergetes, his head and red cap above the forecastle hatch. (I call our
yachtsman Euergetes because it is so unlike his real name that neither he
nor his family will recognise it.) "Why, Euergetes," exclaimed Cynthia,
"wherever did they all come from?" "I'm sure I can't tell you, ma'am," he
answered,