38 With Feet to the Earth 



objects. The men who were giants in the 

 boy's imagination dwindle under the expe- 

 rience and criticism of advancing years, 

 until he finds them to have been a good 

 deal like himself, plus a trifle more of 

 energy or facility in one direction or an- 

 other ; the splendid air-castles he was to 

 occupy shrink and shrink until they assume 

 the meanly comfortable aspect of a two- 

 and-a-half-story house on a street not too 

 shabby ; the feats in war, discovery, states- 

 manship, and circus-riding to which fate 

 was going to call him are all being done 

 by somebody else by the time he is forty ; 

 but nature is ever kindly, and when he 

 goes to the home of his youth he looks 

 on it with the eye of childhood. World- 

 hardened, indeed, must that man be who 

 returns to the scenes of his heartiest and 

 most innocent pleasures without feeling 

 some echo of them in his heart. I brood 

 on the beauty of a stream in which I have 

 bathed and paddled at odd times from 

 babyhood, Black River. 



There are several Black Rivers. It 

 oddly happens that each of my grand- 



