The afternoon was spent in a very different manner.  The family, whose guests we were, possessed a gay and graceful hospitality that gave zest to each moment.  They possessed that rare politeness which, while fertile in pleasant expedients to vary the enjoyment of a friend, leaves him perfectly free the moment he wishes to be so.  With such hosts, pleasure may be combined with repose.  They lived on the bank opposite the town, and, as their house was full, we slept in the town, and passed three days with them, passing to and fro morning and evening in their boats.  (To one of these, called the Fairy, in which a sweet little daughter of the house moved about lighter than any Scotch Ellen ever sung, I should indite a poem, if I had not been guilty of rhyme on the very last page.) At morning this was very pleasant; at evening, I confess I was generally too tired with the excitements of the day to think it so.

Their house—­a double log cabin—­was, to my eye, the model of a Western villa.  Nature had laid out before it grounds which could not be improved.  Within, female taste had veiled every rudeness—­availed itself of every sylvan grace.

In this charming abode what laughter, what sweet thoughts, what pleasing fancies, did we not enjoy!  May such never desert those who reared it and made us so kindly welcome to all its pleasures!

Fragments of city life were dexterously crumbled into the dish prepared for general entertainment.  Ice creams followed the dinner drawn by the gentlemen from the river, and music and fireworks wound up the evening of days spent on the Eagle’s Nest.  Now they had prepared a little fleet to pass over to the Fourth of July celebration, which some queer drumming and fifing, from the opposite bank, had announced to be “on hand.”

We found the free and independent citizens there collected beneath the trees, among whom many a round Irish visage dimpled at the usual puffs of Ameriky.

The orator was a New Englander, and the speech smacked loudly of Boston, but was received with much applause, and followed by a plentiful dinner, provided by and for the Sovereign People, to which Hail Columbia served as grace.

[Illustration:  LOG CABIN AT ROCK RIVER]

Returning, the gay flotilla hailed the little flag which the children had raised from a log-cabin, prettier than any president ever saw, and drank the health of their country and all mankind, with a clear conscience.

Dance and song wound up the day.  I know not when the mere local habitation has seemed to me to afford so fair a chance of happiness as this.  To a person of unspoiled tastes, the beauty alone would afford stimulus enough.  But with it would be naturally associated all kinds of wild sports, experiments, and the studies of natural history.  In these regards, the poet, the sportsman, the naturalist, would alike rejoice in this wide range of untouched loveliness.