water to the soft
islands on the hazy horizon. Was she thinking of her own marriage? Death
had years ago dissolved it, and were these tears, not those of mourning,
but for the great experience possible in life, so seldom realized, missed
forever? Before King could frame, in the tumult of his own thoughts, any
reply, she turned towards him again, with her usual smile, half of
badinage and half of tenderness, and said:

"Come, this is enough of tragedy for one day; let us go on the Island
Wanderer, with the other excursionists, among the isles of the blest."

The little steamer had already its load, and presently was under way,
puffing and coughing, on its usual afternoon trip among the islands. The
passengers were silent, and appeared to take the matter seriously--a
sort of linen-duster congregation, of the class who figure in the homely
dialect poems of the Northern bards, Mrs. Farquhar said. They were
chiefly interested in knowing the names of the successful people who had
built these fantastic dwellings, and who lived on illuminations. Their
curiosity was easily gratified, for in most cases the owners had painted
their names, and sometimes their places of residence, in staring white
letters on conspicuous rocks. There was also exhibited, for the benefit
of invalids, by means of the same white paint, here and there the name of
a medicine that is a household word in this patent-right generation. So
the little steamer sailed, comforted by these remedies, through the
strait of Safe Nervine, round the bluff of Safe Tonic, into the open bay
of Safe Liver Cure. It was a healing voyage, and one in which enterprise
was so allied with beauty that no utilitarian philosopher could raise a
question as to the market value of the latter.

The voyage continued as far as Gananoque, in Canada, where the passengers
went ashore, and wandered about in a disconsolate way to see nothing.
King said, however, that he was more interested in the place than in any
other he had seen, because there was nothing interesting in it; it was
absolutely without character, or a single peculiarity either of Canada or
of the United States. Indeed, this north shore seemed to all the party
rather bleak even in summertime, and the quality of the sunshine thin.

It was, of course, a delightful sail, abounding in charming views, up
"lost channels," through vistas of gleaming water overdrooped by tender
foliage, and now and then great stretches of sea, and alw