The smoke from the lawyer's pipe hung behind him in
the quiet air, while the note of the reveille clangored from the little
buglette of the Norseman. Jimmie and the big Scotch backwoodsman swayed
their bodies in one boat, while the two sinister voyagers dipped their
paddles in the big canoe.
The Norseman's gorge came up, and he yelled back: "Say! this suits me. I
am never going back to New York."
Jimmie grinned at the noise; it made him happy. Such a morning, such a
water, such a lack of anything to disturb one's peace! Let man's better
nature revel in the beauties of existence; they inflate his soul. The
colors play upon the senses--the reddish-yellow of the birch-barks, the
blue of the water, and the silver sheen as it parts at the bows of the
canoes; the dark evergreens, the steely rocks with their lichens, the
white trunks of the birches, their fluffy tops so greeny green, and over
all the gold of a sunny day. It is my religion, this thing, and I do not
know how to tell all I feel concerning it.
The rods were taken out, a gang of flies put on and trolled behind--but
we have all seen a man fight a five-pound bass for twenty minutes. The
waters fairly swarmed with them, and we could always get enough for the
"pot" in a half-hour's fishing at any time during the trip. The Abwees
were canoeing, not hunting or fishing; though, in truth, they did not
need to hunt spruce-partridge or fish for bass in any sporting sense;
they simply went out after them, and never stayed over half an hour.
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