A RIVER VIEW. 



A SMALL river or stream flowing by one's door has 

 many attractions over a large body of water like the 

 Hudson. One can make a companion of it ; he can 

 walk with it and sit with it, or lounge on its banks, 

 and feel that it is all his own. It becomes something 

 private and special to him. You cannot have the 

 same kind of attachment and sympathy with a great 

 river ; it does not flow through your affections like 

 a lesser stream. The Hudson is a long arm of the 

 sea, and it has something of the sea's austerity and 

 grandeur. I think one might spend a lifetime upon 

 its banks without feeling any sense of ownership in 

 it, or becoming at all intimate with it : it keeps one 

 at arm's length. It is a great highway of travel and 

 of commerce; ships from all parts of our seaboard 

 plough its waters. 



But there is one thing a large river does for one 

 that is beyond the scope of the companionable 

 streams, it idealizes the landscape, it multiplies and 

 heightens the beauty of the day and of the season. 

 A fair day it makes more fair, and a wild and tem- 

 pestuous day it makes more wild and tempestuous. 

 It takes on so quickly and completely the mood and 

 temper of the sky above. The storm is mirrored in 



