Being now fairly in the stream of this week’s commerce, we began to meet with boats more frequently, and hailed them from time to time with the freedom of sailors.  The boatmen appeared to lead an easy and contented life, and we thought that we should prefer their employment ourselves to many professions which are much more sought after.  They suggested how few circumstances are necessary to the well-being and serenity of man, how indifferent all employments are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient buoyancy and freedom.  With liberty and pleasant weather, the simplest occupation, any unquestioned country mode of life which detains us in the open air, is alluring.  The man who picks peas steadily for a living is more than respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn neighbors.  We are as happy as the birds when our Good Genius permits us to pursue any out-door work, without a sense of dissipation.  Our penknife glitters in the sun; our voice is echoed by yonder wood; if an oar drops, we are fain to let it drop again.

The canal-boat is of very simple construction, requiring but little ship-timber, and, as we were told, costs about two hundred dollars.  They are managed by two men.  In ascending the stream they use poles fourteen or fifteen feet long, pointed with iron, walking about one third the length of the boat from the forward end.  Going down, they commonly keep in the middle of the stream, using an oar at each end; or if the wind is favorable they raise their broad sail, and have only to steer.  They commonly carry down wood or bricks,—­fifteen or sixteen cords of wood, and as many thousand bricks, at a time,—­and bring back stores for the country, consuming two or three days each way between Concord and Charlestown.  They sometimes pile the wood so as to leave a shelter in one part where they may retire from the rain.  One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.  Unlike the mariner, they have the constantly varying panorama of the shore to relieve the monotony of their labor, and it seemed to us that as they thus glided noiselessly from town to town, with all their furniture about them, for their very homestead is a movable, they could comment on the character of the inhabitants with greater advantage and security to themselves than the traveller in a coach, who would be unable to indulge in such broadsides of wit and humor in so small a vessel for fear of the recoil.  They are not subject to great exposure, like the lumberers of Maine, in any weather, but inhale the healthfullest breezes, being slightly encumbered with clothing, frequently with the head and feet bare.  When we met them at noon as they were leisurely descending the stream, their busy commerce did not look like toil, but rather like some ancient Oriental game still played on a large scale, as the game of chess, for instance, handed down to this generation.  From