ternoon was spent in a very different manner. The family, whose
guests we were, possessed a gay and graceful hospitality that gave zest
to each moment. They possessed that rare politeness which, while fertile
in pleasant expedients to vary the enjoyment of a friend, leaves him
perfectly free the moment he wishes to be so. With such hosts, pleasure
may be combined with repose. They lived on the bank opposite the town,
and, as their house was full, we slept in the town, and passed three
days with them, passing to and fro morning and evening in their boats.
(To one of these, called the Fairy, in which a sweet little daughter of
the house moved about lighter than any Scotch Ellen ever sung, I should
indite a poem, if I had not been guilty of rhyme on the very last page.)
At morning this was very pleasant; at evening, I confess I was generally
too tired with the excitements of the day to think it so.

Their house--a double log cabin--was, to my eye, the model of a Western
villa. Nature had laid out before it grounds which could not be
improved. Within, female taste had veiled every rudeness--availed itself
of every sylvan grace.

In this charming abode what laughter, what sweet thoughts, what pleasing
fancies, did we not enjoy! May such never desert those who reared it and
made us so kindly welcome to all its pleasures!

Fragments of city life were dexterously crumbled into the dish prepared
for general entertainment. Ice creams followed the dinner drawn by the
gentlemen from the river, and music and fireworks wound up the evening
of days spent on the Eagle's Nest. Now they had prepared a little fleet
to pass over to the Fourth of July celebration, which some queer
drumming and fifing, from the opposite bank, had announced to be "on
hand."

We found the free and independent citizens there collected beneath the
trees, among whom many a round Irish visage dimpled at the usual puffs
of Ameriky.

The orator was a New Englander, and the speech smacked loudly of Boston,
but was received with much applause, and followed by a plentiful dinner,
provided by and for the Sovereign People, to which Hail Columbia served
as grace.

[Illustration: LOG CABIN AT ROCK RIVER]

Returning, the gay flotilla hailed the little flag which the children
had raised from a log-cabin, prettier than any president ever saw, and
drank the health of their country and all mankind, with a clear
conscience.

Dance and song wound up the day. I know not