age, take it all in
all. It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished. Indeed, it lies
so far from beaten paths of language, that I despair of getting the
reader into sympathy with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my
condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees
and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my
notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the
rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to
lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes
an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the
object of pleased consideration;--and all the time, with the river
running and the shores changing upon either hand, I kept counting my
strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal in France.

DOWN THE OISE

CHURCH INTERIORS

We made our first stage below Compiegne to Pont Sainte Maxence. I was
abroad a little after six the next morning. The air was biting, and
smelt of frost. In an open place a score of women wrangled together over
the day's market; and the noise of their negotiation sounded thin and
querulous like that of sparrows on a winter's morning. The rare
passengers blew into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to
set the blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, although the
chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine. If you wake early
enough at this season of the year, you may get up in December to break
your fast in June.

I found my way to the church; for there is always something to see about
a church, whether living worshipers or dead men's tombs; you find there
the deadliest earnest, and the hollowest deceit; and even where it is
not a piece of history, it will be certain to leak out some contemporary
gossip. It was scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it
looked colder. The white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the
tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the
solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel, reading and
waiting penitents; and out in the nave, one very old woman was engaged
in her devotions. It was a wonder how she was able to pass her beads
when healthy young people were breathing in their palms and slapping
their chest; but though this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by
the nature of her exercises. She went from chair to chair, from