BRIDGES 163 



the farm, but scarcely less peaceful and with a calm 

 beauty all their own, are the little bridges which cross 

 canals. Nothing is so soothing and sedative as a 

 canal, with its endless levels, its winding tow path, 

 its brimming, quiet water. A canal always seems old, 

 and always lazy. It takes the reflection of every 

 bridge as in a mirror, whether the white-washed bridge 

 near Princeton, where the lock-keeper's house, white- 

 washed, too, is gay with red geraniums, and the lazy 

 barges are few and far between, or some more ancient 

 stone arch in England, formal like the countryside, 

 completed by the reflection into a perfect circle save 

 where the tow path cuts into the circumference. Some- 

 times there is hurry on the bridges; a motor whizzes 

 across, or a galloping horse clatters. How foolish 

 such haste seems from the level of the canal! Your 

 canoe drifts to the gentle impulse of your paddle, and 

 as you pass under the shadow of the bridge the life of 

 roads, leading into distant towns, into rush and tur- 

 moil, seems oddly far off and unreal. The bridge is a 

 reminder of things you had forgotten. 



The modern steel bridge has not yet found itself. 

 It is useful enough, but too seldom beautiful. The steel 

 building is clothed in stone, but the bridge goes naked, 

 with unlovely skeleton. The Brooklyn Bridge, with 

 its stone suspension towers, and the new Charles Street 

 bridge between Cambridge and Boston, where the steel 

 is so fleshed with granite that the skeleton seems solid, 



