Little Rivers [2]
now
advancing it; now bending it in a hundred sinuous curves, and now
speeding it straight as a wild-bee on its homeward flight; here
hiding the water in a deep cleft overhung with green branches, and
there spreading it out, like a mirror framed in daisies, to reflect
the sky and the clouds; sometimes breaking it with sudden turns and
unexpected falls into a foam of musical laughter, sometimes
soothing it into a sleepy motion like the flow of a dream.
Is it otherwise with the men and women whom we know and like? Does
not the spirit influence the form, and the form affect the spirit?
Can we divide and separate them in our affections?
I am no friend to purely psychological attachments. In some
unknown future they may be satisfying, but in the present I want
your words and your voice with your thoughts, your looks and your
gestures to interpret your feelings. The warm, strong grasp of
Greatheart's hand is as dear to me as the steadfast fashion of his
friendships; the lively, sparkling eyes of the master of Rudder
Grange charm me as much as the nimbleness of his fancy; and the
firm poise of the Hoosier Schoolmaster's shaggy head gives me new
confidence in the solidity of his views of life. I like the pure
tranquillity of Isabel's brow as well as her
"most silver flow
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress."
The soft cadences and turns in my lady Katrina's speech draw me
into the humour of her gentle judgments of men and things. The
touches of quaintness in Angelica's dress, her folded kerchief and
smooth-parted hair, seem to partake of herself, and enhance my
admiration for the sweet order of her thoughts and her old-
fashioned ideals of love and duty. Even so the stream and its
channel are one life, and I cannot think of the swift, brown flood
of the Batiscan without its shadowing primeval forests, or the
crystalline current of the Boquet without its beds of pebbles and
golden sand and grassy banks embroidered with flowers.
Every country--or at least every country that is fit for
habitation--has its own rivers; and every river has its own
quality; and it is the part of wisdom to know and love as many as
you can, seeing each in the fairest possible light, and receiving
from each the best that it has to give. The torrents of Norway
leap down from their mountain home with plentiful cataracts, and
run brief but glorious races to the sea. The streams of England
move smoothly through green fields and beside ancient, sleepy
towns. The Scotch rivers brawl through the open moorland and flash
along steep Highland glens. The rivers of the Alps are born in icy
caves, from which they issue forth with furious, turbid waters; but
when their anger has been forgotten in the slumber of some blue
lake, they flow down more softly to see the vineyards of France and
Italy, the gray castles of Germany, the verdant meadows of Holland.
The mighty rivers of the West roll their yellow floods through
broad valleys, or plunge down dark canyons. The rivers of the
South creep under dim arboreal archways hung with banners of waving
moss. The Delaware and the Hudson and the Connecticut are the
children of the Catskills and the Adirondacks and the White
Mountains, cradled among the forests of spruce and hemlock, playing
through a wild woodland youth, gathering strength from numberless
tributaries to bear their great burdens of lumber and turn the
wheels of many mills, issuing from the hills to water a thousand
farms, and descending at last, beside new cities, to the ancient
sea.
Every river that flows is good, and has something worthy to be
loved. But those that we love most are always the ones that we
have known best,--the stream that ran before our father's door, the
current on which we ventured our first boat or cast our first fly,
the brook on whose banks we first picked the twinflower of young
love.
advancing it; now bending it in a hundred sinuous curves, and now
speeding it straight as a wild-bee on its homeward flight; here
hiding the water in a deep cleft overhung with green branches, and
there spreading it out, like a mirror framed in daisies, to reflect
the sky and the clouds; sometimes breaking it with sudden turns and
unexpected falls into a foam of musical laughter, sometimes
soothing it into a sleepy motion like the flow of a dream.
Is it otherwise with the men and women whom we know and like? Does
not the spirit influence the form, and the form affect the spirit?
Can we divide and separate them in our affections?
I am no friend to purely psychological attachments. In some
unknown future they may be satisfying, but in the present I want
your words and your voice with your thoughts, your looks and your
gestures to interpret your feelings. The warm, strong grasp of
Greatheart's hand is as dear to me as the steadfast fashion of his
friendships; the lively, sparkling eyes of the master of Rudder
Grange charm me as much as the nimbleness of his fancy; and the
firm poise of the Hoosier Schoolmaster's shaggy head gives me new
confidence in the solidity of his views of life. I like the pure
tranquillity of Isabel's brow as well as her
"most silver flow
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress."
The soft cadences and turns in my lady Katrina's speech draw me
into the humour of her gentle judgments of men and things. The
touches of quaintness in Angelica's dress, her folded kerchief and
smooth-parted hair, seem to partake of herself, and enhance my
admiration for the sweet order of her thoughts and her old-
fashioned ideals of love and duty. Even so the stream and its
channel are one life, and I cannot think of the swift, brown flood
of the Batiscan without its shadowing primeval forests, or the
crystalline current of the Boquet without its beds of pebbles and
golden sand and grassy banks embroidered with flowers.
Every country--or at least every country that is fit for
habitation--has its own rivers; and every river has its own
quality; and it is the part of wisdom to know and love as many as
you can, seeing each in the fairest possible light, and receiving
from each the best that it has to give. The torrents of Norway
leap down from their mountain home with plentiful cataracts, and
run brief but glorious races to the sea. The streams of England
move smoothly through green fields and beside ancient, sleepy
towns. The Scotch rivers brawl through the open moorland and flash
along steep Highland glens. The rivers of the Alps are born in icy
caves, from which they issue forth with furious, turbid waters; but
when their anger has been forgotten in the slumber of some blue
lake, they flow down more softly to see the vineyards of France and
Italy, the gray castles of Germany, the verdant meadows of Holland.
The mighty rivers of the West roll their yellow floods through
broad valleys, or plunge down dark canyons. The rivers of the
South creep under dim arboreal archways hung with banners of waving
moss. The Delaware and the Hudson and the Connecticut are the
children of the Catskills and the Adirondacks and the White
Mountains, cradled among the forests of spruce and hemlock, playing
through a wild woodland youth, gathering strength from numberless
tributaries to bear their great burdens of lumber and turn the
wheels of many mills, issuing from the hills to water a thousand
farms, and descending at last, beside new cities, to the ancient
sea.
Every river that flows is good, and has something worthy to be
loved. But those that we love most are always the ones that we
have known best,--the stream that ran before our father's door, the
current on which we ventured our first boat or cast our first fly,
the brook on whose banks we first picked the twinflower of young
love.