For half a mile down-stream there is barely a current.  Then comes a break of a dozen yards just below the perched-up bridge, and the stream divides, one part rushing like a mill-race, and the other spreading itself softly around the roots of leaning willows, oozing through beds of water-plants, and creeping under masses of wild grapes and underbrush.  Below this is a broad pasture fringed with another and larger growth of willows.  Here the weeds are breast-high, and in early autumn they burst into purple asters, and white immortelles, and goldenrod, and flaming sumac.

If a painter had a lifetime to spare, and loved this sort of material,—­the willows, hillsides, and winding stream,—­he would grow old and weary before he could paint it all; and yet no two of his compositions need be alike.  I have tied my boat under these same willows for ten years back, and I have not yet exhausted one corner of this neglected pasture.

There may be those who go a-fishing and enjoy it.  The arranging and selecting of flies, the joining of rods, the prospective comfort in high water-boots, the creel with the leather strap,—­every crease in it a reminder of some day without care or fret,—­all this may bring the flush to the cheek and the eager kindling of the eye, and a certain sort of rest and happiness may come with it; but—­they have never gone a-sketching!  Hauled up on the wet bank in the long grass is your boat, with the frayed end of the painter tied around some willow that offers a helping root.  Within a stone’s throw, under a great branching of gnarled trees, is a nook where the curious sun, peeping at you through the interlaced leaves, will stencil Japanese shadows on your white umbrella.  Then the trap is unstrapped, the stool opened, the easel put up, and you set your palette.  The critical eye with which you look over your brush-case and the care with which you try each feather point upon your thumb-nail are but an index of your enjoyment.

Now you are ready.  You loosen your cravat, hang your coat to some rustic peg in the creviced bark of the tree behind you, seize a bit of charcoal from your bag, sweep your eye around, and dash in a few guiding strokes.  Above is a turquoise sky filled with soft white clouds; behind you the great trunks of the many-branched willows; and away off, under the hot sun, the yellow-green of the wasted pasture, dotted with patches of rock and weeds, and hemmed in by the low hills that slope to the curving stream.

It is high noon.  There is a stillness in the air that impresses you, broken only by the low murmur of the brook behind and the ceaseless song of the grasshopper among the weeds in front.  A tired bumblebee hums past, rolls lazily over a clover blossom at your feet, and has his midday luncheon.  Under the maples near the river’s bend stands a group of horses, their heads touching.  In the brook below are the patient cattle, with patches of sunlight gilding and bronzing their backs and sides.  Every now and then a breath of cool air starts out from some shaded retreat, plays around your forehead, and passes on.  All nature rests.  It is her noontime.