"Sir," said that gently piercing critic, "that picture is equally
unsatisfactory to the artist, to the moralist, and to the
voluptuary."

Nevertheless, having made a clean breast of my misgivings and
reservations on the subject of lovers and landscape, I will now
confess that the whole of my doubts do not weigh much against my
unreasoned faith in romantic love.  At heart I am no infidel, but a
most obstinate believer and devotee.  My seasons of skepticism are
transient.  They are connected with a torpid liver and aggravated by
confinement to a sedentary life and enforced abstinence from
angling.  Out-of-doors, I return to a saner and happier frame of
mind.

As my wheel rolls along the Riverside Drive in the golden glow of
the sunset, I rejoice that the episode of Charles Henry and Matilda
Jane has not been omitted from the view.  This vast and populous
city, with all its passing show of life, would be little better than
a waste, howling wilderness if we could not catch a glimpse, now and
then, of young people falling in love in the good old-fashioned way.
Even on a trout-stream, I have seen nothing prettier than the sight
upon which I once came suddenly as I was fishing down the Neversink.

A boy was kneeling beside the brook, and a girl was giving him a
drink of water out of her rosy hands.  They stared with wonder and
compassion at the wet and solitary angler, wading down the stream,
as if he were some kind of a mild lunatic.  But as I glanced
discreetly at their small tableau, I was not unconscious of the new
joy that came into the landscape with the presence of

     "A lover and his lass."

I knew how sweet the water tasted from that kind of a cup.  I also
have lived in Arcadia, and have not forgotten the way back.