“Poor creeter! pass on with your little vague theories and conjectures; you don’t know any more about me than the rest on ’em do, who have tried to write about me.” I felt kinder took back and queer. So vain are we that we don’t like to have our carefully constructed theories overthrown. But even as I mused, a voice said to the right of me—a woman talkin’ to her little boy: 107
“The Lost Channel was named from the fact that durin’ a war a large body of troops got lost here in the channel in the late autumn and could not find their way out, and was overtaken by the bitter cold and perished here.”
Well, mebby if is so, I d’no. But I wuzn’t knowin’ to it myself, nor Josiah wuzn’t. Well, onheedin’ our facts or fancies, the river bore us onwards on its breast. Past high green boulders risin’ up from the water with nothin’ on ’em, not even a tree; jest gray rock lookin’ some like a geni’s castle frownin’ down onto the intruders into their realm. Then anon a pile of high gray rocks crowned as the Sammist sez “with livin’ green.” Then in a minute more a little landlocked bay with placid water sweepin’ back into a pretty harbor, tree shaded, and mebby a boat anchored there like a soul at rest, or mebby a sail-boat with two young hearts in it driftin’ down the sea of their content, as the tiny waves rippled round their oars. Then a grand big mansion lookin’ down onto us kinder superciliously. Then a small, pretty farm house with snug outbuildings, a man lookin’ at us from the open barn door, and some children playin’ round the doorstep. Then a big island with grassy shores or wooded depths; then a tiny 108 island, not too big for a child’s playhouse, and some that wuz only a bit of rock peekin’ out of the water.
And fur off all the time when we could see it wuz the blue hazy distance full of beauty; ever-changin’ glimpses of loveliness, givin’ place to new beauties. Fur off, fur off sometimes we could see distant pinnacles and towers, all bathed in the blue shinin’ mist. And as the rapt eyes of our Fancy gazed on ’em, they might have been the towers of the New Jerusalem, the Golden city, so dreamlike, so inexpressibly lovely did they seem faintly photographed aginst the soft blue distant heavens.
But cold Reality said in her chillin’ practical whisper, “It’s nothin’ but Gananoque or Clayton,” and she went on, “They hain’t anything like the New Jerusalem, either of them.”
Alas for us poor mortals! who drive or are driv by the two contendin’ coharts of Imagination, Idealized Fancy and practical Reality. And she always will have the last word, Reality will, and her voice is loud and shrill, and it penetrates into the warm, sweet Indian summer air, where Fancy dwells and where we sometimes visit her for brief intervals. Too brief! too brief! for cold Reality is always hangin’ 109 round; she is always up and dressed ready to put in her note.
I mentioned the metafor to Josiah and he sez, “Yes, it minds me of the man who was brought up before the judge by his wife. She complained he hadn’t spoke to her for five years. The judge ast him if that were so, and he said, ‘Yes, that’s so.’ ‘But why,’ sez the judge, ‘why hain’t you spoke to your wife for five years?’ And the man sez, ‘Because I didn’t want to interrupt her.’” Josiah declares it is true, but I believe it is jest a slur on wimmen.
But to resoom. Swiftly, silently we sped on with the islands about us, the blue sky overhead and the shadow islands below. And innumerable boats appeared far and near, some with white sails lifted, and followed below by a white shadow sail, and anon a big steamer would glide along, loaded down to its gunwale with crowds of gay pleasure seekers, who would wave their snowy handkerchiefs and salute us, the steamer backin’ ’em with its deep grum voice. Or anon we could see a big dark barge sailin’ along, and Fancy would whisper to us as we gazed on its mysterious dark sides without a soul in sight:
“It may be the phantom of some old Pirate 110 ship, condemned for its sins to cruise along forever in strange waters, homesick for its native seas.” But Reality spoke right up jest as she always will and said it wuz probable some big lake steamer heavy loaded with grain or some great Canadian boat. And then a new seen of beauty would drift into our vision and take our minds off and carry ’em away some distance. Oh, it is no wonder that Faith’s soft eyes grew more tender and luminous.
Josiah felt the beauty of the seen, he felt it deeply, but everybody knows that beauty affects folks differently, it always seems to sharpen up my dear companion’s appetite, and three cookies in as many minutes wuz offered up on the shrine of his vivid appreciation, and two nut cakes.