at, and to shoot for him,--kindly
offering a place to the Judge and myself.

The word _Eider_ had long been to me a name to conjure with. At some
far-away period in childhood it got imbedded in my fancy, and in process
of time had acquired that subtilest, indefinable fascination which
belongs only to imaginative reminiscence. In the future, I suppose, all
this existence will have become such a childhood, its earth changed to
sky, its dulness sharpened to a tender, delicious poignancy of
allurement and suggestion. And were it not bliss enough for an
immortality, this boundless deepening and refining of experience through
memory and imagination? Only to feel thrilling in one's being chords of
connection with times immeasurably bygone! only to be fed with ethereal
remembrance out of a youth scarcely less ancient than the stars! Pity
Tithonus no more; or pity him only because in him age had become the
enemy of itself, and spilled the wine from its own cup.

The wind was ahead, and blew freshly down through the wilderness of
islands, sweeping between granite shores along many and many a winding
channel; the boat careened almost to her gunwale, yielding easily at
first, but holding hard when well down, as good boats will; the waves
beat saucily against her, now and then also catching up a handful of
spray, and flinging it full in our faces, not forbearing once or twice
to dash it between the open lips of a talker, salting his speech
somewhat too much for his comfort, though not too much for the
entertainment of his interlocutors; while overhead the rifted gray was
traversed by whited seams, making another wilderness of islands in the
clouds. We had gone a mile, and were now sailing smoothly in the lee of
an island, when Bradford exclaimed, "See there! What's that? Why, that's
a 'sea-goose.' Can you get him for me?" (to the elder Canadian). I had
snuggled down in the bottom of the boat, and sprang up, expecting, from
the word "goose," to see a large and not handsome bird, when instead
appeared the tiniest tid-bit of swimming elegance that eye ever beheld.
Reddish about neck and breast, graceful as a swan in form and motion,
while not larger than a swallow, light as the lightest feather on the
water, turning its curving neck and dainty head to look,--it seemed more
like an embodied fancy than a creature inured to the chill of Arctic
seas and the savagery of Arctic storms. What goose first gave it the
name "sea-goose" passes co