insisted could not be surpassed; and arranging a nice cushion on the
grass with her shawl, she begged her mother to make a sketch there.
"Now, mama," she said, "you must take both sides of the river."

"You forget, Julia, that I cannot take a panorama view."

"Then you must leave out the inn, and the beautiful hill behind it, with
its sycamores and locusts, and the road that winds along the bank of the
river."

"Yes, my dear, here is the boundary of your picture:--this magnificent
elm-tree, that seems to pay its debt to the nourishing waters, by
extending its graceful branches over them."

"And don't fail, mother," said Edward, "to mark the deep shadow it casts
on that pier of the bridge they are building--and oh, do put in that
little skiff so snugly moored in the shade, and hooked to the tree--and
that taper church spire that stretches above the thick wood on the
left;--oh, if you could but paint it as it looks now, with that bright
gleam from the setting sun on it. And see, mother, just at this instant,
what a golden mist there is in the topmost branches of that tree."

"Stop your chattering one moment, Ned, till I get in this little brook
on the left, that is creeping so softly into the bosom of the Mohawk.
Oh, my children, it is an easy task to draw these lines so as to convey
a correct idea of forms and distances, but very difficult to imitate the
colouring of nature, the delicate touch of her skilful hand. How shall I
represent the freshness and purity that marks the youth of the year?--like
childhood, Ned, smiling and promising, and as yet unchanged by time."

"If not changed, not perfected by time, dear mother," said Edward,
kissing his mother. His manner expressed a mixture of admiration and
tenderness that went to her heart.

"You have spoiled my picture, Ned," she said, "I cannot make another
straight line. Come, Julia, take up the port-folio, and we will return
to the inn."

* * * * *

We hope our readers will not complain that we have not kept good faith
with them, if we have been tempted to loiter longer than we promised on
the banks of the Mohawk. To reward them for their patience (if perchance
they have exercised that difficult virtue, without availing themselves
of the skipping right--the readers' inalienable right) we shall make but
one stage of it from Palatine to Oneida, not once halting at any of the
beautiful grounds, waterfalls, or villages, tha