Running doubtless each some happy choice, some 

 Waters, hidden predilection. That will depend on 

 memories and associations. I read some- 

 where recently that a certain traveller could 

 not anywhere find, could nowhere recall, any 

 stream or river for him so poetical, so lovely 

 in quiet beauty as the Yorkshire Ouse. My 

 knowledge of that river is restricted to a brief 

 intimacy at and near York, and my recollec- 

 tion of it is of a broad turbid stream between 

 muddy banks. But that does not interfere 

 with the giving full credit to that traveller's 

 loyal affection. He would remember the 

 Ouse among the sands of Egypt or by the 

 yellow flow of the Hooghly or perhaps by the 

 surge of some great river as the Mississippi, 

 and it would flow through his mind in a 

 serene pastoral beauty, bluer than any river 

 that ever flowed in our grey North, and in a 

 changeless light of May or June, with calling 

 cuckoo and th ridding swallow unmindful of 

 seasons that come and go, and with green flag 

 and tufted reed and trailing willow-branch as 

 unfading as the memories to which they are 

 for evermore wed. It would not be the Ouse 

 that you or I look at from the muddy banks 

 on a dull November day, or catch a glimpse 

 of as the North Express whirls by. It would 

 be the Ouse of boyhood and youth and the 

 140 



