It was glowing with lights, looking many-eyed and sagacious; in its heavy motion it seemed a dowager queen, and this motion, with its solemn pulse, and determined sweep, becomes these smooth waters, especially at night, as much as the dip of the sail-ship the long billows of the ocean.
But it was not so soon that I learned to appreciate the lake scenery; it was only after a daily and careless familiarity that I entered into its beauty, for Nature always refuses to be seen by being stared at.
Like Bonaparte, she discharges her face of all expression when she catches the eye of impertinent curiosity fixed on her.

But he who has gone to sleep in childish ease on her lap, or leaned an aching brow upon her breast, seeking there comfort with full trust as from a mother, will see all a mother's beauty in the look she bends upon him.
Later, I felt that I had really seen these regions, and shall speak of them again.
In the afternoon we went on shore at the Manitou Islands, where the boat stops to wood.

No one lives here except wood-cutters for the steamboats.

I had thought of such a position, from its mixture of profound solitude with service to the great world, as possessing an ideal beauty.

I think so still, even after seeing the wood-cutters and their slovenly huts.
In times of slower growth, man did not enter a situation without a certain preparation or adaptedness to it.