Oh, radiant and divine afternoon!  The poets profusely celebrate silver evenings and golden mornings; but what floods on floods of beauty steep the earth and gladden it in the first hours of day’s decline!  The exuberant rays reflect and multiply themselves from every leaf and blade; the cows lie upon the hill-side, with their broad peaceful backs painted into the landscape; the hum of insects, “tiniest bells on the garment of silence,” fills the air; the gorgeous butterflies doze upon the thistle-blooms till they almost fall from the petals; the air is full of warm fragrance from the wild-grape clusters; the grass is burning hot beneath the naked feet in sunshine, and cool as water in the shade.  Diving from this overhanging beam,—­for Ovid evidently meant that Midas to be cured must dive,—­

  “Subde caput, corpusque simul, simul elue
  crinem,”—­

one finds as kindly a reception from the water as in childish days, and as safe a shelter in the green dressing-room afterwards; and the patient wherry floats near by, in readiness for a reembarkation.

Here a word seems needed, unprofessionally and non-technically, upon boats,—­these being the sole seats provided for occupant or visitor in my out-door study.  When wherries first appeared in this peaceful inland community, the novel proportions occasioned remark.  Facetious bystanders inquired sarcastically whether that thing were expected to carry more than one,—­plainly implying by labored emphasis that it would occasionally be seen tenanted by even less than that number.  Transcendental friends inquired, with more refined severity, if the proprietor expected to meditate in that thing?  This doubt at least seemed legitimate.  Meditation seems to belong to sailing rather than rowing; there is something so gentle and unintrusive in gliding effortless beneath overhanging branches and along the trailing edges of clematis thickets;—­what a privilege of fairy-land is this noiseless prow, looking in and out of one flowery cove after another, scarcely stirring the turtle from his log, and leaving no wake behind!  It seemed as if all the process of rowing had too much noise and bluster, and as if the sharp slender wherry, in particular, were rather too pert and dapper to win the confidence of the woods and waters.  Time has dispelled the fear.  As I rest poised upon the oars above some submerged shallow, diamonded with ripple-broken sunbeams, the fantastic Notonecta or water-boatman rests upon his oars below, and I see that his proportions anticipated the wherry, as honeycombs antedated the problem of the hexagonal cell.  While one of us rests, so does the other; and when one shoots away rapidly above the water, the other does the same beneath.  For the time, as our motions seem the same, so with our motives,—­my enjoyment certainly not less, with the conveniences of humanity thrown in.