changes the position of shadows of rock and cedar and flings handf uls of 

 sunshine in my face out of sheer joy and sportiveness. The insects 

 whine drowsily (though they mean no music), and the voice of St. Croix 

 Falls sings on like a minstrel whose voice never grows husky nor weary, 

 nor his hands tired of the harp he holds and thrums. 



And when the day snuffs out his light and falls asleep, the river 

 sings on. In the day there were other voices; now the river sings 

 alone. The voice of the waters is full of sorrow, like the story of a 

 broken heart. Sometimes the note seems to me like a dying man 

 who makes signs, beckoning you near with a world of intention in his 

 eyes, draws your ear close to his lips, tries to frame lips to the words 

 his heart would speak, but at the best his words are incoherent and he 

 dies with his secret unrevealed or half revealed. So these waters. 

 Their voices are, as says Longfellow: 



"Full of hope and yet of heart-break;" 



but seem to cry, "Hear my story, hear, hear my story!" And at night, 

 when other voices hush their jargon, then the waters have their way. 

 Their day is night; and they catch stars in their tangle of waters 

 and blur their light and seem to say, "This hour is mine," and send 

 up their mournful voices like incense through the darkness. How 

 sweet it is to hear the music of waters come through the lattices of 

 your sleep and dreams 1 I leave my window open and draw the bed-head 

 close to the window-ledge, so that in my score of wakings in the night 

 each tone of the singing waters may tell its story of lament; and I 

 whisper, "I thank you for your melody," and fall into slumber again. 

 Nor is this all the St. Croix can offer, though this is much, and 

 enough to change summer into a holiday. The stream's voice suffices 

 to change turmoil into quietness, and make room for the ineffable pres- 

 ence of the Christ of God. Along the eastern acclivities running south- 

 ward from the falls, spring after spring gushes out. You can not make 

 an inventory of them. They baffle you. Every bank has its fountain, 

 and I sit thus and write of them with the voices of these waters on 

 every side. One bubbles with a boyish self-assurance; another sounds 

 like a harp heard afar; another has haunting notes, quiet and tender as 

 a melody half-forgotten, so that I am compassed about with music. 

 Every mossy bank is a cluster from which nature is squeezing crystal 

 wines. Here are moss, and fern, and shrub, and violet leaves, flower- 

 less now, but reminiscent, all huddled here in quiet and hidden neighbor- 



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