The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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home, 'travelling abed,' it is merely as if he were listening to another
man's story or turning the leaves of a picture book in which he had no
concern. He may take his afternoon walk in some foreign country on the
banks of the canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside."

They grew most enthusiastic over the idea and told one another how they
would furnish their "water villa" with easy chairs, pipes, and tobacco,
and the bird and the dog should go along too.

By the time Fontainebleau was reached they had planned trips through all
the canals of Europe. The idea took the artists' fancy also, and a group
of them actually purchased a canal-boat called _The Eleven Thousand
Virgins of Cologne_. Furnishing a water villa, however, was more
expensive than they had foreseen, and she came to a sad end. "'The
Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne' rotted in the stream where she was
beautified ... she was never harnessed to the patient track-horse. And
when at length she was sold, by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there