eace and goodness and jollity. The only thing that was wrong now， really， was the sound of the place， an unfamiliar nervous sound of the outboard motors. This was the note that jarred， the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving. In those other summer times all motors were inboard； and when they were at a little distance， the noise they made was a sedative， an ingredient of summer sleep. They were one-cylinder and two-cylinder engines， and some were make-and-break and some were jump-spark， but they all made a sleepy sound across the lake. The one-cylinder throbbed and fluttered， and the twin-cylinder ones purred and purred， and that was a quiet sound too. But now the campers all had outboards. In the daytime， in the hot mornings， these motors made a petulant， irritable sound； at night， in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water， they whined about one’ s ears like mosquitoes. My boy loved our rented outboard， and his great desire was to achieve single handed mastery over it， and authority， and he soon learned the trick of choking it a little (but not too much)， and the adjustment of the needle valve. Watching him I would remember the things you could do with the old one-cylinder engine with the heavy flywheel， how you could have it eating out of your hand if you got really close to it spiritually. Motor boats in those days didn’ t have clutches， and you would make a landing by shutting off the motor at the proper time and coasting in with a dead rudder. But there was a way of reversing them， if you learned the trick， by cutting the switch and putting it on again exactly on the final dying revolution of the flywheel， so that it would kick back against compression and begin reversing. Approaching a dock in a strong following breeze， it was difficult to slow up sufficiently by the ordinary coasting method， and if a boy felt he had complete mastery over his motor， he was tempted to keep it running beyond its time and then reverse it a few feet from the dock. It took a cool nerve. Because if you threw the switch a twentieth of a second too soon you would catch the flywheel when it still had speed enough to go up past center， and the boat would leap ahead， charging bull-fashion at the dock.