Out on the Lake by this time the burlesque upon a steamboat had floated, and the sheet of water lay under as well as around the passengers—perhaps a quarter of a mile in width and a mile in length, shut in on the side of approach by the woods, and beyond on all sides by the eternal hills. Never was silver jewel dotting the green bosom of nature more beautiful—never one more sweetly nestled away near the very heart of its mountain nurse. The proverbial winds of the Notch for once were still, and only a gentle ripple stirred the glassy surface here and there as a breath touched it like the skimming wing of a wild bird. The meridian sun lay lovingly on the side and crest of the mountain rising eastward from the edge of the water, touching its bald, scarred brow with ruddy gold; and if the first on the cliffs nodded at times, they nodded sleepily with the very expression of repose. Spirit of calm, delicious quiet!—was there ever a spot more truly sacred to thee, than Echo Lake at such moments, when a few gentle, loving hearts, close bound to each other and shut in from the world, are beating with slow pulses as the life and centre of the great mystery of nature? Other boat-loads than that of this July noon, have grown quiet beneath such a feeling, as the boatman ceased his paddling, the boat drifted lazily on, lips grew silent, eyes closed, and human thought floated away on a very sea of dreams.
They had swept over, in rapt silence for the last few moments, until they lay beneath the very brow of the eastern mountain. Then that silence was broken by the boatman rising from his seat and blowing a long, steady blast on his six-foot tin horn, in size and shape like those used on the Western canals, but sadly dinted by careless use and frequent falling. The company were reminded, then, that they were floating on Echo Lake and no stream of the land of faerie. The long, low note died on the car, and an appreciable instant of silence followed. Then it came back from the brow of the mountain above, a little louder than before, and yet a little mellowed by distance. Another instant, and the same sound reverberated from the opposite hill, the back of Eagle Cliff. Were there still more echoes to be added to the two that had already made the place notable? Yes, a third came back from the range that sloped away from the head of the Lake, northward—a little fainter, and broken now; and then the more distant hills caught the sound, as if each had a right, which it jealously claimed, to some portion of that greeting from the human breath; and far as the eye could trace the blue peaks rising behind each other through the gaps beyond, the ear could catch a corresponding reverberation, fainter—fainter—fainter,—till it died away in a drowsy murmur and silence followed. Then the horn passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, some of the gallants perhaps forming kisses of the touch of red lips which had preceded theirs; and some blew round, full strains that awakened admiration, and some made but a melancholy whistle which excited merry laughter. Among the many experiments tried upon that horn, there must have been some horrid discords startling the Dryads in the wooded shades up the mountain, where the gazers sometimes seemed to see the echo leaping from cliff to cliff and from bough to bough. But they soon came willingly back to the practised notes of the boatman; and some of the party shut their eyes and dreamed, as his quick, sharp peals rang merrily up among the hills,—of noble lord and gentle lady, hunting in the days of old, and of the bugle blasts of outlaws sounding through gloomy Ardennes or merry Sherwood. Anon he would end his strain with a long, low falling note, and they heard some old cathedral hymn wailing through solemn arches and bending the spirit to reverence and prayer. But through all that succession of sounds the hard, dry, practical, exigeant Present was rolled away and the romantic, easy Past stood in its stead; so easily does the mind, like the body, cast off its burthen, whenever permitted, and lie down, if only for a moment, upon the lap of indolence!
Scarcely a word had been spoken, in the boat, for some minutes, under the influence of that spell of the hour. But the normal condition of humanity, when awake, is to keep the tongue in motion; and not even the spell of Echo Lake could keep that busy member still beyond the customary period. Comparisons of other echoes, in our own and other lands, were made, and as the boatman rowed on to complete the circuit of the Lake, the conversation became nearly general.
"Echo Lake looks very smiling and quiet to-day," said one of the company—the same old habitue of the mountains who had commenced the conversation the day before with Halstead Rowan, at the Pool. "But I have seen it look very differently, sometimes when a gale came roaring and singing up through the Notch, and the saucy little thing got a black frown upon its face, reflected from the leaden sky and the wind-tossed trees up yonder. Echo is blown away, at such times, as any one would be who dared the perils of this sea of limited dimensions; and you would be surprised to know how hard the wind can blow just here, and what little, tumbling, dangerous waves of rage the dwarf can kick up, trying to make an ocean of itself."
"The most singular view that I ever had of it," said another, "I caught half way up the Cannon Mountain one afternoon. It looked like a wash-bowl, and I had a fancy that I could toss a piece of soap into it from where I stood! But I knew that it must be Echo Lake, for somebody was blowing a horn; and I believe there has never been an hour of daylight, since creation, when a horn has not been blowing somewhere in the neighborhood."
"There is one more point of view in which to see it," said Horace Townsend, who had not before joined at any length in the conversation. "I mean by moonlight, for any one who is part night-hawk."
"Ah, have you seen it so?" asked the last speaker, with interest.
"Yes—last night," answered the lawyer.
"As often as I have been here," said the first old habitue, "I have never come down to see it by moonlight. What is it like?"
"Like something that I cannot very well describe," was the answer. "You had better all come down and see it for yourselves, before you leave the Notch."