THE WANDERING HOUSEBOAT COMES ALONG TO FIND ONLY AN EMPTY PIER" BERKELEY; THE ANCESTRAL HOME OF A SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND OF TWO PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES THE FIELD ROAD AND THE QUARTERS RIVERWARD FRONT OF SHIRLEY (In full color)

There was a charming bit of water with trees hanging over; a sky all soft and blue (you knew it was soft and blue just as you knew that the air was soft and cool; just as you knew that a drowsy peace and quiet was brooding over all); and there, in the midst, idly floated a houseboat with a woman idly swinging in a hammock and a man idly fishing from the back porch.

We did not know that most of the literature of houseboating is the work of people with plenty of imagination and no houseboats.

We resolved to build a houseboat.

An earnest quest was next made for anybody and everybody who had ever used, seen, or heard of a houseboat; and the Commodore made journeys to various waters where specimens of this queer craft were to be found.

Once Nautica had a charming creation, all verandas and overhanging roofs and things; but an old waterman came along and talked about wind and waves, and most of the overhanging art on that little houseboat disappeared under the eraser.

[Illustration: THE HOUSEBOAT GADABOUT.

All these interior arrangements were without the makeshifts so often found in houseboats.

People aboard a houseboat must at best be living in close quarters.

While such a feature enables the houseboater to navigate very shallow waters (where often he finds his most charming retreats), yet it also enables the houseboat, under certain conditions of wind and tide, to go sidewise with all the blundering facility of a crab.

To Gadabout and her crew, add anchors, chains and ropes, small boats, poles and sweeps, parallel rulers, dividers and charts, anchor-lights, lanterns and side-lights, compasses, barometers and megaphones, fenders, grapnels and boathooksuntil the landlubberly owners are almost frightened back to solid land; and then all is ready for a houseboat cruise.

The houseboat was lying in a quiet lagoon bordered on the mainland side by a bit of Virginia's great truck garden.

For, whatever may have gone before, the real story of the James and of America too commences with the bloom of the dogwood some three hundred years ago, when from the wild waste of the Atlantic three puny, storm-worn vessels (scarcely more seaworthy than our tub of a houseboat) beat their way into the sheltering mouth of this unknown river.

" It was later by three hundred years lacking one when our houseboat came along to gather up that story.

As our houseboat skirted the southern shore of the James in the sunny afternoon, our engines chugging merrily, our flags flying, and our two trailing rowboats dancing on the boiling surge kicked up astern, we felt that our cruise was well begun.

If the houseboat is built with the accent on the first syllable, as it ought to be, the homey feeling comes quickly to the family group aboard.

Sometimes the vessel is seaworthy enough to lie out and take whatever wind and waves may inflict; but that is usually where much of the charm and comfort of the houseboat has been sacrificed to make her so.

It is easy then to see that snug harbours count for much when cruising in the true spirit of houseboating, and in the charming, awkward tubs that make the best and the most lovable of houseboats.

A cheery salute was given us as the houseboat passed close by the skiffs, and we thought no more of them.

While the conversation ranged wide, from seventeenth century plantation grants to twentieth century houseboats, we found our attention drawn most to the reminiscences of Mrs. Douthat, told in the charming speech of a day that had time for the art of conversation.

The vanishing houseboat.

Honey Bunch: her first trip on a houseboat.

THORNDYKE, HELEN LOUISE, pseud. Honey Bunch: her first trip on a houseboat, by Helen Louise Thorndyke, pseud.

The crowding sampans, houseboats, and junks stretched far out into its oily, oozy flow, making a floating city as he neared the congested life of the coast, where the ever-increasing population failed to find ground space in its maggoty swarming.

Wherever these people went, to be sure, they left outpostsa Mediterranean villa, a deer forest behind the Grampians, small Saturday-to-Monday establishments beside the Thames and the North Sea, and furnished abodes on short leases near Newmarket and Ascot Heaths; not to mention nomadic trifles such as houseboats and yachts.