Little Rivers [7]
is a brilliant description of a bishop fishing, which I am sure is
drawn from the life: "Thus a bishop, sans wig and petticoat, in a
hairy cap, black jacket, corduroy breeches and leathern leggins,
creel on back and rod in hand, sallying from his palace, impatient
to reach a famous salmon-cast ere the sun leave his cloud, . . .
appears not only a pillar of his church, but of his kind, and in
such a costume is manifestly on the high road to Canterbury and the
Kingdom-Come." I have had the good luck to see quite a number of
bishops, parochial and diocesan, in that style, and the vision has
always dissolved my doubts in regard to the validity of their claim
to the true apostolic succession.
Men's "little ways" are usually more interesting, and often more
instructive than their grand manners. When they are off guard,
they frequently show to better advantage than when they are on
parade. I get more pleasure out of Boswell's Johnson than I do out
of Rasselas or The Rambler. The Little Flowers of St. Francis
appear to me far more precious than the most learned German and
French analyses of his character. There is a passage in Jonathan
Edwards' Personal Narrative, about a certain walk that he took in
the fields near his father's house, and the blossoming of the
flowers in the spring, which I would not exchange for the whole of
his dissertation On the Freedom of the Will. And the very best
thing of Charles Darwin's that I know is a bit from a letter to his
wife: "At last I fell asleep," says he, "on the grass, and awoke
with a chorus of birds singing around me, and squirrels running up
the tree, and some woodpeckers laughing; and it was as pleasant and
rural a scene as ever I saw; and I did not care one penny how any
of the birds or beasts had been formed."
Little rivers have small responsibilities. They are not expected
to bear huge navies on their breast or supply a hundred-thousand
horse-power to the factories of a monstrous town. Neither do you
come to them hoping to draw out Leviathan with a hook. It is
enough if they run a harmless, amiable course, and keep the groves
and fields green and fresh along their banks, and offer a happy
alternation of nimble rapids and quiet pools,
"With here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling."
When you set out to explore one of these minor streams in your
canoe, you have no intention of epoch-making discoveries, or
thrilling and world-famous adventures. You float placidly down the
long stillwaters, and make your way patiently through the tangle of
fallen trees that block the stream, and run the smaller falls, and
carry your boat around the larger ones, with no loftier ambition
than to reach a good camp-ground before dark and to pass the
intervening hours pleasantly, "without offence to God or man." It
is an agreeable and advantageous frame of mind for one who has done
his fair share of work in the world, and is not inclined to grumble
at his wages. There are few moods in which we are more susceptible
of gentle instruction; and I suspect there are many tempers and
attitudes, often called virtuous, in which the human spirit appears
to less advantage in the sight of Heaven.
It is not required of every man and woman to be, or to do,
something great; most of us must content ourselves with taking
small parts in the chorus. Shall we have no little lyrics because
Homer and Dante have written epics? And because we have heard the
great organ at Freiburg, shall the sound of Kathi's zither in the
alpine hut please us no more? Even those who have greatness thrust
upon them will do well to lay the burden down now and then, and
congratulate themselves that they are not altogether answerable for
the conduct of the universe, or at least not all the time. "I
reckon," said a cowboy to me one day, as we were riding through the
Bad Lands of Dakota, "there's some