204 A RIVER VIEW. 



it, and the wind chafes it into foam. The face of 

 winter it makes doubly rigid and corpse-like. How 

 stark and still and white it lies there ! But of a 

 bright day in spring, what life and light possess it ! 

 How it enhances or emphasizes the beauty of those 

 calm, motionless days of summer or fall, the broad, 

 glassy surface perfectly duplicating the opposite shore, 

 sometimes so smooth that the finer floating matter 

 here and there looks like dust upon a mirror ; the be- 

 calmed sails standing this way and that, drifting with 

 the tide. Indeed, nothing points a calm day like a 

 great motionless sail ; it is such a conspicuous bid for 

 the breeze which comes not. 



I have noticed that when the river is roily, a calm 

 conceals it ; a glassy surface is a kind of -mask. But 

 when the breeze comes and agitates it a little, its real 

 color comes out. 



" Immortal water," says Thoreau, " alive to the 

 superficies." How sensitive and tremulous and pal- 

 pitating this great river is ! It is only in certain 

 lights, on certain days, that we can see how it quivers 

 and throbs. Sometimes you can see the subtle tremor 

 or impulse that travels in advance of the coming 

 steamer and prophesies of its coming. Sometimes 

 the coming of the flood tide is heralded in the same 

 way. Always, when the surface is calm enough and 

 the light is favorable, the river seems shot through 

 and through with tremblings and premonitions. 



The river never seems so much a thing of life as in 

 the spring when it first slips off its icy fetters. The 



