“You forget, Julia, that I cannot take a panorama view.”
“Then you must leave out the inn, and the beautiful hill behind it, with its sycamores and locusts, and the road that winds along the bank of the river.”
“Yes, my dear, here is the boundary of your picture:—this magnificent elm-tree, that seems to pay its debt to the nourishing waters, by extending its graceful branches over them.”
“And don't fail, mother,” said Edward, “to mark the deep shadow it casts on that pier of the bridge they are building—and oh, do put in that little skiff so snugly moored in the shade, and hooked to the tree—and that taper church spire that stretches above the thick wood on the left;—oh, if you could but paint it as it looks now, with that bright gleam from the setting sun on it. And see, mother, just at this instant, what a golden mist there is in the topmost branches of that tree.”
“Stop your chattering one moment, Ned, till I get in this little brook on the left, that is creeping so softly into the bosom of the Mohawk. Oh, my children, it is an easy task to draw these lines so as to convey a correct idea of forms and distances, but very difficult to imitate the colouring of nature, the delicate touch of her skilful hand. How shall I represent the freshness and purity that marks the youth of the year?—like childhood, Ned, smiling and promising, and as yet unchanged by time.”
“If not changed, not perfected by time, dear mother,” said Edward, kissing his mother. His manner expressed a mixture of admiration and tenderness that went to her heart.
“You have spoiled my picture, Ned,” she said, “I cannot make another straight line. Come, Julia, take up the port-folio, and we will return to the inn.”
We hope our readers will not complain that we have not kept good faith with them, if we have been tempted to loiter longer than we promised on the banks of the Mohawk. To reward them for their patience (if perchance they have exercised that difficult virtue, without availing themselves of the skipping right—the readers' inalienable right) we shall make but one stage of it from Palatine to Oneida, not once halting at any of the beautiful grounds, waterfalls, or villages, that intervene.
It was mid-day, and a hot day too, when our travellers entered this Indian town, which presents a striking aspect, situated as it is in the heart of a cultivated and civilized country.