For my younger brother and myself, this lake had a different attraction, for, improbable as it may seem, it was the haunt of a gang of most abandoned pirates.  Behind a wooded island, but quite invisible to the adult eye, the pirate craft lay, conforming in the most orthodox fashion to the descriptions in Ballantyne’s books:  “a schooner with a long, low black hull, and a suspicious rake to her masts.  The copper on her bottom had been burnished till it looked like gold, and the black flag, with the skull and cross-bones, drooped lazily from her peak.”

The presence of this band of desperadoes entailed the utmost caution and watchfulness in the neighbourhood of the lake.  Unfortunately, we nearly succeeded in drowning some young friends of ours, whom we persuaded to accompany us in an attack on the pirates’ stronghold.  We embarked on a raft used for cutting weeds, but no sooner had we shoved off than the raft at once, most inconsiderately, sank to the bottom of the lake with us.  Being Christmas time, the water was not over-warm, and we had some difficulty in extricating our young friends.  Their parents made the most absurd fuss about their sons having been forced to take a cold bath in mid-December in their best clothes.  Clearly we could not be held responsible for the raft failing to prove sea-worthy, though my youngest brother, even then a nice stickler for correct English, declared, that, given the circumstances, the proper epithet was “lake-worthy.”

What a wonderful dream-world the child can create for himself, and having fashioned it and peopled it, he can inhabit his creation in perfect content quite regardless of his material surroundings, unless some grown-up, with his matter-of-fact bluntness, happens to break the spell.

I have endeavoured to express this peculiar faculty of the child’s in rather halting blank verse.  I apologise for giving it here, as I make no claim to be able to write verse.  My only excuse must be that my lines attempt to convey what every man and woman must have felt, though probably the average person would express himself in far better language than I am able to command.

    “Eheu fugaces Postume!  Postume! 
    Labuntur anni.

    “The memories of childhood are a web
    Of gossamer, most infinitely frail
    And tender, shot with gleaming threads of gold
    And silver, through the iridescent weft
    Of subtlest tints of azure and of rose;
    Woven of fragile nothings, yet most dear,
    As binding us to that dim, far-off time,
    When first our lungs inhaled the fragrance sweet
    Of a new world, where all was bright and fair. 
    As we approach the end of mortal things,
    The band of comrades ever smaller grows;
    For those who have not shared our trivial round,
    Nor helped with us to forge its many links,
    Can only listen with dull, wearied mind. 
    Some few there are on whom