The trunks of the ivy-vines must be more than a foot in
circumference, and one feels they have stolen the life that belonged to
the pines. The dead branches of one of the pines stick out horizontally
through the ivy-boughs. The other shows nothing but the ivy, and in
shape a good deal resembles a poplar. When the pine trunks shall have
quite crumbled away, the ivy-stems will doubtless have gained sufficient
strength to sustain themselves independently.
July 19th.--Yesterday S----- went down the lake in the steamboat to take
U----, baby, and nurse to Newby Bridge, while the three rest of us should
make a tour through the lake region. After mamma's departure, and when I
had finished some letters, J----- and I set out on a walk, which finally
brought us to Bowness, through much delightful shade of woods, and past
beautiful rivulets or brooklets, and up and down many hills. This chief
harbor of the lakes seemed alive and bustling with tourists, it being a
sunny and pleasant day, so that they were all abroad, like summer
insects. The town is a confused and irregular little place, of very
uneven surface. There is an old church in it, and two or three large
hotels. We stayed there perhaps half an hour, and then went to the pier,
where shortly a steamer arrived, with music sounding,--on the deck of
which, with her back to us, sat a lady in a gray travelling-dress.
J----- cried out, "Mamma! mamma!" to which the lady deigned no notice,
but, he repeating it, she turned round, and was as much surprised, no
doubt, to see her husband and son, as if this little lake had been the
great ocean, and we meeting each other from opposite shores of it.
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