Little Rivers [3]
However far we may travel, we come back to Naaman's state of
mind: "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than
all the waters of Israel?"
It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always
the most agreeable, nor the best to live with. Diogenes must have
been an uncomfortable bedfellow: Antinous was bored to death in the
society of the Emperor Hadrian: and you can imagine much better
company for a walking trip than Napoleon Bonaparte. Semiramis was
a lofty queen, but I fancy that Ninus had more than one bad
quarter-of-an-hour with her: and in "the spacious times of great
Elizabeth" there was many a milkmaid whom the wise man would have
chosen for his friend, before the royal red-haired virgin. "I
confess," says the poet Cowley, "I love littleness almost in all
things. A little convenient Estate, a little chearful House, a
little Company, and a very little Feast, and if I were ever to fall
in Love again, (which is a great Passion, and therefore, I hope, I
have done with it,) it would be, I think, with Prettiness, rather
than with Majestical Beauty. I would neither wish that my
Mistress, nor my Fortune, should be a Bona Roba, as Homer uses to
describe his Beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter for the
stateliness and largeness of her Person, but as Lucretius says:
'Parvula, pumilio, [Greek text omitted], tota merum sal.'"
Now in talking about women it is prudent to disguise a prejudice
like this, in the security of a dead language, and to intrench it
behind a fortress of reputable authority. But in lowlier and less
dangerous matters, such as we are now concerned with, one may dare
to speak in plain English. I am all for the little rivers. Let
those who will, chant in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and
Mississippi and Niagara, but my prose shall flow--or straggle along
at such a pace as the prosaic muse may grant me to attain--in
praise of Beaverkill and Neversink and Swiftwater, of Saranac and
Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and Aroostook and Moose River.
"Whene'er I take my walks abroad," it shall be to trace the clear
Rauma from its rise on the fjeld to its rest in the fjord; or to
follow the Ericht and the Halladale through the heather. The
Ziller and the Salzach shall be my guides through the Tyrol; the
Rotha and the Dove shall lead me into the heart of England. My
sacrificial flames shall be kindled with birch-bark along the
wooded stillwaters of the Penobscot and the Peribonca, and my
libations drawn from the pure current of the Ristigouche and the
Ampersand, and my altar of remembrance shall rise upon the rocks
beside the falls of Seboomok.
I will set my affections upon rivers that are not too great for
intimacy. And if by chance any of these little ones have also
become famous, like the Tweed and the Thames and the Arno, I at
least will praise them, because they are still at heart little
rivers.
If an open fire is, as Charles Dudley Warner says, the eye of a
room; then surely a little river may be called the mouth, the most
expressive feature, of a landscape. It animates and enlivens the
whole scene. Even a railway journey becomes tolerable when the
track follows the course of a running stream.
What charming glimpses you catch from the window as the train winds
along the valley of the French Broad from Asheville, or climbs the
southern Catskills beside the Aesopus, or slides down the
Pusterthal with the Rienz, or follows the Glommen and the Gula from
Christiania to Throndhjem. Here is a mill with its dripping, lazy
wheel, the type of somnolent industry; and there is a white
cascade, foaming in silent pantomime as the train clatters by; and
here is a long, still pool with the cows standing knee-deep in the
water and swinging their tails in calm indifference to the passing
world; and there is a lone fisherman sitting upon a rock, rapt in
contemplation
mind: "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than
all the waters of Israel?"
It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always
the most agreeable, nor the best to live with. Diogenes must have
been an uncomfortable bedfellow: Antinous was bored to death in the
society of the Emperor Hadrian: and you can imagine much better
company for a walking trip than Napoleon Bonaparte. Semiramis was
a lofty queen, but I fancy that Ninus had more than one bad
quarter-of-an-hour with her: and in "the spacious times of great
Elizabeth" there was many a milkmaid whom the wise man would have
chosen for his friend, before the royal red-haired virgin. "I
confess," says the poet Cowley, "I love littleness almost in all
things. A little convenient Estate, a little chearful House, a
little Company, and a very little Feast, and if I were ever to fall
in Love again, (which is a great Passion, and therefore, I hope, I
have done with it,) it would be, I think, with Prettiness, rather
than with Majestical Beauty. I would neither wish that my
Mistress, nor my Fortune, should be a Bona Roba, as Homer uses to
describe his Beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter for the
stateliness and largeness of her Person, but as Lucretius says:
'Parvula, pumilio, [Greek text omitted], tota merum sal.'"
Now in talking about women it is prudent to disguise a prejudice
like this, in the security of a dead language, and to intrench it
behind a fortress of reputable authority. But in lowlier and less
dangerous matters, such as we are now concerned with, one may dare
to speak in plain English. I am all for the little rivers. Let
those who will, chant in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and
Mississippi and Niagara, but my prose shall flow--or straggle along
at such a pace as the prosaic muse may grant me to attain--in
praise of Beaverkill and Neversink and Swiftwater, of Saranac and
Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and Aroostook and Moose River.
"Whene'er I take my walks abroad," it shall be to trace the clear
Rauma from its rise on the fjeld to its rest in the fjord; or to
follow the Ericht and the Halladale through the heather. The
Ziller and the Salzach shall be my guides through the Tyrol; the
Rotha and the Dove shall lead me into the heart of England. My
sacrificial flames shall be kindled with birch-bark along the
wooded stillwaters of the Penobscot and the Peribonca, and my
libations drawn from the pure current of the Ristigouche and the
Ampersand, and my altar of remembrance shall rise upon the rocks
beside the falls of Seboomok.
I will set my affections upon rivers that are not too great for
intimacy. And if by chance any of these little ones have also
become famous, like the Tweed and the Thames and the Arno, I at
least will praise them, because they are still at heart little
rivers.
If an open fire is, as Charles Dudley Warner says, the eye of a
room; then surely a little river may be called the mouth, the most
expressive feature, of a landscape. It animates and enlivens the
whole scene. Even a railway journey becomes tolerable when the
track follows the course of a running stream.
What charming glimpses you catch from the window as the train winds
along the valley of the French Broad from Asheville, or climbs the
southern Catskills beside the Aesopus, or slides down the
Pusterthal with the Rienz, or follows the Glommen and the Gula from
Christiania to Throndhjem. Here is a mill with its dripping, lazy
wheel, the type of somnolent industry; and there is a white
cascade, foaming in silent pantomime as the train clatters by; and
here is a long, still pool with the cows standing knee-deep in the
water and swinging their tails in calm indifference to the passing
world; and there is a lone fisherman sitting upon a rock, rapt in
contemplation