es and tangled vines,
and the water about it is so still that it's all reflected double and
looks the same either way up. Then when the steamer's whistle blows as
it comes into the wharf, you hear it echo among the trees of the island,
and reverberate back from the shores of the lake.

The scene is all so quiet and still and unbroken, that Miss
Cleghorn,--the sallow girl in the telephone exchange, that I spoke
of--said she'd like to be buried there. But all the people were so busy
getting their baskets and gathering up their things that no one had time
to attend to it.

I mustn't even try to describe the landing and the boat crunching
against the wooden wharf and all the people running to the same side of
the deck and Christie Johnson calling out to the crowd to keep to the
starboard and nobody being able to find it. Everyone who has been on a
Mariposa excursion knows all about that.

Nor can I describe the day itself and the picnic under the trees. 'There
were speeches afterwards, and Judge Pepperleigh gave such offence
by bringing in Conservative politics that a man called Patriotus
Canadiensis wrote and asked for some of the invaluable space of the
Mariposa Times-Herald and exposed it.

I should say that there were races too, on the grass on the open side
of the island, graded mostly according to ages, races for boys under
thirteen and girls over nineteen and all that sort of thing. Sports
are generally conducted on that plan in Mariposa. It is realized that a
woman of sixty has an unfair advantage over a mere child.

Dean Drone managed the races and decided the ages and gave out the
prizes; the Wesleyan minister helped, and he and the young student, who
was relieving in the Presbyterian Church, held the string at the winning
point.

They had to get mostly clergymen for the races because all the men had
wandered off, somehow, to where they were drinking lager beer out of two
kegs stuck on pine logs among the trees.

But if you've ever been on a Mariposa excursion you know all about these
details anyway.

So the day wore on and presently the sun came through the trees on a
slant and the steamer whistle blew with a great puff of white steam and
all the people came straggling down to the wharf and pretty soon the
Mariposa Belle had floated out on to the lake again and headed for the
town, twenty miles away.

I suppose you have often noticed the contrast there is between an
excursion on its way out in the m