Notwithstanding the howlet warning of that envious and spiteful body John Waft, as I had such good reason to think him, we continued to sail down the rippling stream, jocund among ourselves, and joyous with the pleasant aspect which all things around us had put on. It was one of the few holidays of my ripened years; and every breeze, and bough, and blossom recommended itself into our gentle senses with the influence of a spell compounded of sweetness and charity, delight and love. I thought of the beautiful spring described in the Canticles of Solomon; and as I leant on the shoulder of my wife, with my eyes half shut, and my fancy floating in reverie, I had something like a palpable enjoyment of mildness and quiet fondling about my heart.

But in the midst of that innocent sensuality, the screech of the Paisley omen, “I have had a dream,” dismayed my spirit, and darkened the beauties of the heavens and the earth. The deep smooth pools of the crystalline river became black and sepulchral, and the sparkling hurry of the brisk and gladdening rapids grew into ravenous whirlpools, as remorseless as the salt-sea waves:—who could have thought that the most felicitous day of a harmless life could have been so overcast by the dormant vapour in the stomach of an ill-fed and fantastical old weaver?

But so it was; I could not shake off the bodement; it clung upon me like a cold waxen winding sheet, until I could see nothing but dangers in our sailing, and heard not a sound that told not of peril. I was miserable; I would have given the king's dominions, and all the United States, with the incomparable city of New York to the bargain, had they been mine, not to have been in that scow on that river on that day.