e studying them most
intently, it is a fair bet whether we might not have continued to study
the table with the same delight.

About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating. I think
I made a god of my belly. I remember dwelling in imagination upon this
or that dish till my mouth watered; and long before we got in for the
night my appetite was a clamant, instant annoyance. Sometimes we paddled
alongside for a while, and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies
as we went. Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but not within reach
upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; and once, as we
were approaching Verberie, the _Cigarette_ brought my heart into my
mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne.

I suppose none of us recognise the great part that is played in life by
eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious that we can stomach
the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner-hour thankfully
enough on bread and water; just as there are men who must read
something, if it were only "Bradshaw's Guide." But there is a romance
about the matter after all. Probably the table has more devotees than
love; and I am sure that food is much more generally entertaining than
scenery. Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the
less immortal for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we
are. To detect the flavour of aean olive is no less a piece of human
perfection than to find beauty in the colours of the sunset.

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the proper inclination, now
right, now left; to keep the head down stream; to empty the little pool
that gathered in the lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes against the
glittering sparkles of sun upon the water; or now and again to pass
below the whistling tow-rope of the _Deo Gratias_ of Conde, or the _Four
Sons of Aymon_--there was not much art in that; certain silly muscles
managed it between sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole
holiday, and went to sleep. We took in, at a glance, the larger features
of the scene; and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fishers and dabbling
washerwomen on the bank. Now and again we might be half-wakened by some
church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung
about the paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away. But these
luminous intervals were only partially luminous. A little more of us was
called into