such a
scrutiny. This talk was introduced by his mentioning the "Minister's
Black Veil," which he said he had seen translated into French, as an
exercise, by a Miss Appleton of Bangor.

Saw by the river-side, late in the afternoon, one of the above-described
boats going into the stream, with the water rippling at the prow, from
the strength of the current and of the boat's motion. By-and-by comes
down a raft, perhaps twenty yards long, guided by two men, one at each
end,--the raft itself of boards sawed at Waterville, and laden with
square bundles of shingles and round bundles of clapboards. "Friend,"
says one man, "how is the tide now?"--this being important to the onward
progress. They make fast to a tree, in order to wait for the tide to
rise a little higher. It would be pleasant enough to float down the
Kennebec on one of these rafts, letting the river conduct you onward at
its own pace, leisurely displaying to you all the wild or ordered
beauties along its banks, and perhaps running you aground in some
peculiarly picturesque spot, for your longer enjoyment of it. Another
object, perhaps, is a solitary man paddling himself down the river in a
small canoe, the light, lonely touch of his paddle in the water making
the silence seem deeper. Every few minutes a sturgeon leaps forth,
sometimes behind you, so that you merely hear the splash, and, turning
hastily around, see nothing but the disturbed water. Sometimes he darts
straight on end out of a quiet black spot on which your eyes happen to
be fixed, and, when even his tail is clear of the surface, he falls down
on his side, and disappears.

On the river-bank, an Irishwoman washing some clothes, surrounded by her
children, whose babbling sounds pleasantly along the edge of the shore;
and she also answers in a sweet, kindly, and cheerful voice, though an
immoral woman, and without the certainty of bread or shelter from day to
day. An Irishman sitting angling on the brink with an alder pole and a
clothes-line. At frequent intervals, the scene is suddenly broken by a
loud report like thunder, rolling along the banks, echoing and
reverberating afar. It is a blast of rocks. Along the margin, sometimes
sticks of timber made fast, either separately or several together;
stones of some size, varying the pebbles and sand; a clayey spot, where
a shallow brook runs into the river, not with a deep outlet, but finding
its way across the bank in two or three single runlets. Looking