68 UNDER THE TREES. 



of the vast human experience wrought out between 

 these mountain boundaries. As I think of these 

 things and of the world of dear past things which 

 they recall, another great river sweeps into the 

 vision of memory, but how different ! There comes 

 with it no warmth of human emotion, but only the 

 breath of the unbroken woods, the awful aspect of 

 the great, precipitous cliffs, the vast solitude out of 

 which it rolls, with troubled current, to mingle its 

 mysterious waters with the northern gulf. It is a 

 stream which Nature still keeps for herself, and 

 suffers no division of ownership with men; a stream 

 as wild and solitary as the remote and unpeopled 

 land through which it moves. This river, on the 

 other hand, bears every hour the wealth of a great 

 inland commerce upon its wide current ; it flows 

 past cities and villages scattered thickly along its 

 course, past countless homes whose lights weave a 

 shining net along its banks at night; on still Sab 

 bath mornings the bells answer each other in almost 

 unbroken peal along its course. Emerging from 

 an unknown past in the earliest days of discovery, 

 human interests have steadily multiplied along its 

 shores, and spread over it the countless lines of 

 human activity. To-day the Argo, multiplied a 

 thousand times, seeks the golden fleece of com 

 merce at every point along its shores ; and of the 

 countless Jasons who make the voyage few return 

 empty-handed. Hour after hour the white sails fly 

 in mysterious and changing lines, messengers of 



