rd-cages.
On some women sat knitting stockings and rocking the cradle at the
same time; on others they were cooking; sometimes all the members of
the family, excepting the one who was towing, were eating in a group.
The look of peace that beams from the faces of those people and the
tranquil appearance of those aquatic houses, of those animals which in
a certain measure have become amphibious, the serenity of that
floating life, the air of security and freedom of those wandering and
solitary families,--these are not to be described. Thus in Holland
live thousands of families who have no other houses but their boats. A
man marries, and the wedded couple buy a boat, make it their home, and
carry merchandise from one market to another. Their children are born
on the canals; they are bred and grow up on the water; the barge holds
their house-hold goods, their small savings, their domestic memories,
their affections, their past, and all their present happiness and
hopes for the future. They work, save, and after many years buy a
larger boat, and sell their old house to a poorer family or give it to
their eldest son, who from some other boat takes a wife, at whom he
has glanced for the first time in an encounter on the canal. Thus from
barge to barge, from canal to canal, life passes silently and
peacefully, like the wandering boat which shelters it and the slow
water that accompanies it.

For some time I saw only small peasants' houses on the banks; then I
began to see villas, pavilions, and cottages half hidden among the
trees, and in the shadiest corners fair-haired ladies dressed in
white, seated book in hand, or some fat gentleman enveloped in a cloud
of smoke with the contented air of a wealthy merchant. All of these
little villas are painted rose-color or azure; they have varnished
tile roofs, terraces supported by columns, little yards in front or
around them, with tidy flower-beds and neatly-kept paths; miniature
gardens, clean, closely trimmed, and well tended. Some houses stand
on the brink of the canal with their foundations in the water,
allowing one to see the flowers, the vases, and the thousand shining
trifles in the rooms. Nearly all have an inscription on the door which
is the aphorism of domestic happiness, the formula of the philosophy
of the master, as--"Contentment is Riches;" "Pleasure and Repose;"
"Friendship and Society;" "My Desires are Satisfied;" "Without
Weariness;" "Tranquil and Content;" "Here