CHAPTER XXX.
FRED POWER'S ADVENTURE IN PHILIPSTOWN.
The lazy hours of the long summer day crept slowly over.

The sea, unbroken by foam or ripple, shone like a broad blue mirror, reflecting here and there some fleecy patches of snow-white cloud as they stood unmoved in the sky.

The good ship rocked to and fro with a heavy and lumbering motion, the cordage rattled, the bulkheads creaked, the sails flapped lazily against the masts, the very sea-gulls seemed to sleep as they rested on the long swell that bore them along, and everything in sea and sky bespoke the calm.
No sailor trod the deck; no watch was stirring; the very tiller ropes were deserted; and as they traversed backwards and forwards with every roll of the vessel, told that we had no steerage-way, and lay a mere log upon the water.
I sat alone in the bow, and fell into a musing fit upon the past and the future.

How happily for us is it ordained that in the most stirring existences there are every here and there such little resting-spots of reflection, from which, as from some eminence, we look back upon the road we have been treading in life, and cast a wistful glance at the dark vista before us! When first we set out upon our worldly pilgrimage, these are indeed precious moments, when with buoyant heart and spirit high, believing all things, trusting all things, our very youth comes back to us, reflected from every object we meet; and like Narcissus, we are but worshipping our own image in the water.

As we go on in life, the cares, the anxieties, and the business of the world engross us more and more, and such moments become fewer and shorter.