s to be less
exact. The sweetest thing about St. Wolfgang was the abundance of purple
cyclamens, clothing the mountain meadows, and filling the air with
delicate fragrance like the smell of lilacs around a New England
farmhouse in early June.

There was still one stretch of the river above Ischl left for the last
evening's sport. I remember it so well: the long, deep place where the
water ran beside an embankment of stone, and the big grayling poised
on the edge of the shadow, rising and falling on the current as a kite
rises and falls on the wind and balances back to the same position; the
murmur of the stream and the hissing of the pebbles underfoot in the
rapids as the swift water rolled them over and over; the odour of the
fir-trees, and the streaks of warm air in quiet places, and the faint
whiffs of wood-smoke wafted from the houses, and the brown flies dancing
heavily up and down in the twilight; the last good pool, where the river
was divided, the main part making a deep, narrow curve to the right, and
the lesser part bubbling into it over a bed of stones with half-a-dozen
tiny waterfalls, with a fine trout lying at the foot of each of them and
rising merrily as the white fly passed over him--surely it was all very
good, and a memory to be grateful for. And when the basket was full,
it was pleasant to put off the heavy wading-shoes and the long
rubber-stockings, and ride homeward in an open carriage through the
fresh night air. That is as near to sybaritic luxury as a man should
care to come.

The lights in the cottages are twinkling like fire-flies, and there are
small groups of people singing and laughing down the road. The honest
fisherman reflects that this world is only a place of pilgrimage, but
after all there is a good deal of cheer on the journey, if it is made
with a contented heart. He wonders who the dwellers in the scattered
houses may be, and weaves romances out of the shadows on the curtained
windows. The lamps burning in the wayside shrines tell him stories
of human love and patience and hope, and of divine forgiveness.
Dream-pictures of life float before him, tender and luminous, filled
with a vague, soft atmosphere in which the simplest outlines gain a
strange significance. They are like some of Millet's paintings--"The
Sower," or "The Sheepfold,"--there is very little detail in them but
sometimes a little means so much.

Then the moon slips up into the sky from behind the hills, and the
fi