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CHAPTER XVI.

-Alarm'd, he sees the stream

That rippling murmured chang'd to flowing glass,
O'er whose smooth silence slides the roughest wind :
Louder and louder nears the roaring fall."

NOTWITHSTANDING the howlet warning of that envious and spiteful body John Waft, as I had such good reason to think him, we continued to sail down the rippling stream; jocund among ourselves, and joyous with the pleasant aspect which all things around us had put on. It was one of the few holidays of my ripened years, and every breeze, and bough, and blossom recommended itself into our gentle senses with the influence of a spell compounded of sweetness and charity, delight and love. I thought of the beautiful spring de

scribed in the canticles of Solomon; and as I leant on the shoulder of my wife, with my eyes half shut, and my fancy floating in reverie, I had something like a palpable enjoyment of mildness and quiet fondling about my heart.

But in the midst of that innocent sensuality, the screech of the Paisley omen, "I have had a dream," dismayed my spirit, and darkened the beauties of the Heavens and the earth. The deep smooth pools of the crystalline river became black and sepulchral, and the sparkling hurry of the brisk and gladdening rapids grew into ravenous whirlpools, as remorseless as the salt-sea waves who could have thought that the most felicitous day of a harmless life, could have been so overcast by the dormant vapour in the stomach of an ill-fed and fantastical old weaver?

But so it was; I could not shake off the bodement; it clung upon me like a cold waxen winding-sheet, until I could see nothing but dangers in our sailing, and heard not a sound that told not of peril. I was miserable; I would have given the King's dominions, and all the United States, with the incomparable city.

of New York to the bargain, had they been mine, not to have been in that scow on that river on that day.

"I have had a dream." The devil dream you! thought I:-what was it about ?—and then I began to wish we had not been in such haste to shove off; for that, perhaps, this dream was, after all, but a mist of the mind: why should it have had such an effect on me? Ay, why should it ?

Just at the very moment I said so, the scow took a swirl in a narrow part of the river, and whirling round and round as it rushed down a strong rapid, dashed my head with such a bir against the branch of a prostrate tree, that I was for a space of time, as Mr. Hoskins said, as douced as a Tory cannon-ball in the ground at Bunker's Hill.

However, I recovered from that contusion, and having cleared the contumacious tree, we steered into a snug cove, a little farther down, and fastening the scow to the bushes, opened our baskets and began to eat. Whether it Iwas the dint on the head that knocked "I have had a dream" out of it, or that appetite, sharpened by the morning air, would not take

cognizance of any thing unsubstantial, may be made matter for a metaphysical question; but assuredly I thought not of it while we were chuckling and churming over our chickens; and when we loosened the rope, and launched again into the mid current, I was the primest of the party for an hilarious freedom of speech, till we came to a rough and rude, steep and vehement passage of the river, a roaring rapid, almost a

cataract.

To shoot it, seemed impossible; to reach the land, was every moment becoming more and more impracticable. "I have had a dream,” flared across my mind; there it is to be fulfilled, thought I. On we were going; down to the bottom seemed inevitable. Mr. Hoskins, in the crisis of jeopardy, saw us nearing upon a rock. He flung out his two hands like a Hercules, pushed the scow with such force from the rock, that before the most composed among us could say Jack Robinson, I was clinging to the overhanging branch of tree, and the scow, with the ladies and Mr. Hoskins, was safe in a little bay scooped out of the river's bank, crying to me to hold

on.

How it was that I had so caught the branch,

no one. uld ever explain; but the incontrovertible fact was, the scow had descended a fall of more than five feet, and that in the descent under the tree I had grasped the stooping branch, and was lifted out, as a child is sometimes lifted from out its cradle, by clinging to its nurse.

Though my situation was perilous, I was not long in danger; by a little exertion, being light of body and lither of limb, I got upon the tree, and clambered along until I could drop upon the ground. Had I not cause for thankfulness on this occasion that I had been formed with such legerity?

By this time the day was pretty far advanced: to navigate the scow back up the stream was out of the question; to sail farther no one could tell what might happen. The river was wide and deep; the woods around were wild and unknown ; we were all in a bad way, and "I have had a dream" rung as the death-bell in my ears. Mr. Hoskins alone was composed; in the whole course of the voyage he said little, but his quick eye was glancing and glimmering on all sides. At this particular spot, where we had been so nearly shipwrecked, he looked stu

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