The last to weary were the three graces and a couple
of companions; and just as they, too, had had enough, the
foremost of the three leaped upon a tree-stump and kissed
her hand to the canoeists. Not Diana herself, although
this was more of a Venus, after all, could have done a
graceful thing more gracefully. 'Come back again!' she
cried; and all the others echoed her; and the hills about
Origny repeated the words, 'Come back.' But the river had
us round an angle in a twinkling, and we were alone with
the green trees and running water.
Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the
impetuous stream of life.
'The merchant bows unto the seaman's star,
The plowman from the sun his season takes.'
And we must all set our pocket watches by the clock of
fate. There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears
away man with his fancies like straw, and runs fast in time
and space. It is full of curves like this, your winding
river of the Oise; and lingers and returns in pleasant
pastorals; and yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at
all. For though it should revisit the same acre of meadow
in the same hour, it will have made an ample sweep between-
whiles; many little streams will have fallen in; many
exhalations risen toward the sun; and even although it were
the same acre, it will not be the same river Oise.
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