t in
that particular form of physical exercise. It had developed during the
day that Charley had once run a gasoline engine. I was careful to
emphasize my ridiculous lack of mechanical ability. Charley took the
bait beautifully.

But just now the engine ran merrily. Above its barking I sang the
praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, at least in
this, the tail would wag the dog.

Through the clear quiet waters, between soaring canyon walls, we raced
eastward into the creeping twilight. Here and there the banks widened
out into valleys of wondrous beauty, flanked by jagged miniature
mountains transfigured in the slant evening light. It seemed the "faerie
land forlorn" of which Keats dreamed, where year after year come only
the winds and the rains and the snow and the sunlight and the star-sheen
and the moon-glow.

In the deepening evening our widening V-shaped wake glowed with
opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and
lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions,
went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake
three or four hundred yards wide and eight inches deep. Slipping poles
under the power boat, we carried it several hundred yards to a point
where the stream deepened. It was now quite dark, and the engine quit
work for the day. The skiff towed us another mile or so to a camping
place.

Having moored the boats, we lined up on the shore and had a song. It was
a quintet, consisting of a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Irishman, a
Cornishman, and a German. A very strong quintet it was; that is to say,
strong on volume. As to quality--we weren't thrusting ourselves upon an
audience. The river and the sky didn't seem to mind, and the cliffs sang
after us, lagging a beat or two.

We wished to sing ever so beautifully; and, after all, it would be much
better to have the whole world wishing to sing melodiously, than to have
just a few masters here and there who really can! Did you ever hear a
barefooted, freckle-faced plowboy singing powerfully and quite out of
tune, the stubble fields about him still glistening with the morning
dew, and the meadow larks joining in from the fence-posts? I have: and
soaring above the faulty execution, I heard the lark-heart of the
never-aging world wooing the far-off eternal dawn. True song is merely a
hopeful condition of the soul. And so I am sure we sang very wonderfully
that night.

And ho