"GO see her?—certainly I will!" said the Artist.

"So will I!" exclaimed the Scribbler, jumping to his feet and rearranging his neck-tie; "if she is half as beautiful as you say, I'd go every day to see her, even were the trip twice the score of miles that it is."

"And I," said the Editor, replacing in his vest-pocket the folding-scissors which he nervously fingered by force of professional habit.

"'Tis done, then," said the Statesman, "she will be at my house to-morrow evening and the winter through, but she is particularly handsome and graceful just now, and there's no time like the present, you know. Dine with me to-morrow evening: I'll give you a tip-top spread, but when you see her you'll forget it all."

"We will come!" shouted the Artist, the Scribbler and the Editor in chorus, and when twenty-four hours later the trio fulfilled their promise, they admitted that the half had not been told them. They exhibited however, none of that unseemly jealousy which would naturally be expected from a trio of admirers at sight of an almost phenomenal beauty, for the object of their admiration was a canoe, and accepted their attentions with an impartiality which would have been the envy of any society queen. She occupied the study of the Statesman, and covered almost as much space as if she were a lady with a train of the first magnitude; she was in every line the embodiment of grace, and her beauty was not entirely independent of paint and other cosmetics. But here the parallel ceased. In visiting a canoe the visitor enjoys certain liberties which are not admissible during an ordinary evening call. A gentleman may speak in most enthusiastic praise of a canoe, and right to her face, without being suspected of a desire to flirt; he may criticise freely without seeming unmannerly; he may even talk admiringly of other canoes without disturbing the outward or inward complacency of his fair entertainer. He may even unlock his wits with a good cigar without provoking a cough from the fair being, and without compelling her to send her finer adornments to the bleachery next day, or expose them on the family clothes-line, to the purifying breezes of heaven. One may look fixedly by the hour at a beautiful canoe without being guilty of ungentlemanly staring, and may thus call up all those finer sentiments which far transcend the powers of expression, and may thus elevate his own nature to a degree which is unattainable under the restrictions of a fashionable call. He may without offence or even discourtesy, touch her, though if he be a man of true character he can not do so without a struggle with natural timidity, and without a new sense of his own awkwardness.

The quartette gazed, and smoked, until the fair outline before them became veiled in the soft haze which so enhances the glories of a perfect form and a rich complexion. They talked, they mused, they talked again; the Artist, the Scribbler and the Editor talked of their own special darlings of the same genus. They mused again, then they fell once more to admiring. The one blot upon the perfection of the being before them was that her sole guardian had christened her "Rochefort," but the Statesman, like statesmen in general, had his weaknesses, and if men cannot be tenderly enduring of the weaknesses of their friends, what statesman can live? At length the Rochefort's protector broke silence by saying,

"Can you fellows gaze upon her, and talk of her rivals, and then refuse to go on a cruise this summer?"

"Not I!" exclaimed the Editor.

"Refuse?" exclaimed the Scribbler, and then he betrayed his Hibernian ancestry by adding, "I'd go alone, for the sake of having her with me."

"And I know just where to go," said the Artist. "I know of a picturesque lake whose outlet is a placid river flowing through an Acadia like that which Longfellow has pictured, and breaking at last into wild rapids down which we can run like salmon in the fall."

"Is Evangeline still there?" asked the Statesman, with symptoms of lively interest.

"She is every where," replied the Artist.

"Why," said the Statesman, examining his mental memoranda, "she died two centuries ago."

"She is perennial," answered the Artist, and the Statesman inwardly cursed his own literal perceptives.

"Let's take our sentiment when we are there," suggested the Editor; "this is the hour for action."

The conversation which ensued need not be detailed here. It would consume so much ink and paper as materially to raise the price of these staples. It is sufficient to say that the quartette silenced forever the calumnious statement that only ladies talk two or three at a time, and that the necessary supplies decided upon for the trip exceeded in bulk the cargo of that most capacious vessel, the Mayflower.