Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools | Page 6

so woven a web of weed,
moss, trailing vine, and low-branching tree that there is seen a newer
and more entrancing quality in her beauty, which, for want of a better
term, we call the picturesque.
But madame is calling that the big boat must be bailed out; that if I am
ever coming back to dinner it is absolutely necessary that I should go
away. This boat is not of extraordinary size. It is called the big boat
from the fact that it has one more seat than the one in which Lucette
rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is
generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She
has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it
as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely
presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed
type with "François Laguerre, Restaurant Français," and ending with
"Coffee 10 cents."
But this time I resist, remarking that she will hurt her hands and soil her
shoes, and that it is all right as it is.
To this François the younger, who is leaning over the fence, agrees,
telling Lucette to wait until he gets a pail.
Lucette catches his eye, colors a little, and says she will fetch it.
There is a break in the palings through which they both disappear, but I
am half-way out on the stream, with my traps and umbrella on the seat

in front and my coat and waistcoat tucked under the bow, before they
return.
For half a mile down-stream there is barely a current. Then comes a
break of a dozen yards just below the perched-up bridge, and the stream
divides, one part rushing like a mill-race, and the other spreading itself
softly around the roots of leaning willows, oozing through beds of
water-plants, and creeping under masses of wild grapes and underbrush.
Below this is a broad pasture fringed with another and larger growth of
willows. Here the weeds are breast-high, and in early autumn they burst
into purple asters, and white immortelles, and goldenrod, and flaming
sumac.
If a painter had a lifetime to spare, and loved this sort of material,--the
willows, hillsides, and winding stream,--he would grow old and weary
before he could paint it all; and yet no two of his compositions need be
alike. I have tied my boat under these same willows for ten years back,
and I have not yet exhausted one corner of this neglected pasture.
There may be those who go a-fishing and enjoy it. The arranging and
selecting of flies, the joining of rods, the prospective comfort in high
water-boots, the creel with the leather strap,--every crease in it a
reminder of some day without care or fret,--all this may bring the flush
to the cheek and the eager kindling of the eye, and a certain sort of rest
and happiness may come with it; but--they have never gone a-sketching!
Hauled up on the wet bank in the long grass is your boat, with the
frayed end of the painter tied around some willow that offers a helping
root. Within a stone's throw, under a great branching of gnarled trees, is
a nook where the curious sun, peeping at you through the interlaced
leaves, will stencil Japanese shadows on your white umbrella. Then the
trap is unstrapped, the stool opened, the easel put up, and you set your
palette. The critical eye with which you look over your brush-case and
the care with which you try each feather point upon your thumb-nail
are but an index of your enjoyment.
Now you are ready. You loosen your cravat, hang your coat to some
rustic peg in the creviced bark of the tree behind you, seize a bit of
charcoal from your bag, sweep your eye around, and dash in a few

guiding strokes. Above is a turquoise sky filled with soft white clouds;
behind you the great trunks of the many-branched willows; and away
off, under the hot sun, the yellow-green of the wasted pasture, dotted
with patches of rock and weeds, and hemmed in by the low hills that
slope to the curving stream.
It is high noon. There is a stillness in the air that impresses you, broken
only by the low murmur of the brook behind and the ceaseless song of
the grasshopper among the weeds in front. A tired bumblebee hums
past, rolls lazily over a clover blossom at your feet, and has his midday
luncheon. Under the maples near the river's bend stands a group of
horses, their heads touching. In the brook below are the patient cattle,
with patches of sunlight gilding and bronzing their backs and sides.
Every now and