Every one feels the exhilaration of such a descent. I know a lady who almost cried with fright when she went down her first rapid, but before the voyage was ended she was saying:--"Count that day lost whose low, descending sun Sees no fall leaped, no foaming rapid run."It takes a touch of danger to bring out the joy of life.
Our guides began to shout, and joke each other, and praise their canoes.
"You grazed that villain rock at the corner," said Jean; "didn't you know where it was?""Yes, after I touched it," cried Ferdinand; "but you took in a bucket of water, and I suppose your m'sieu' is sitting on a piece of the river. Is it not?"This seemed to us all a very merry jest, and we laughed with the same inextinguishable laughter which a practical joke, according to Homer, always used to raise in Olympus. It is one of the charms of life in the woods that it brings back the high spirits of boyhood and renews the youth of the world. Plain fun, like plain food, tastes good out-of-doors. Nectar is the sweet sap of a maple-tree.
