LANDSCAPE LINES AND GARDENING 265 



the barge lying horizontal on its flood, even the driver 

 and the mules and the cable falling into level line as you 

 see them through a haze of rain, perhaps, or the morning 

 fog. There was once an unhappy time in my life when I 

 fought the demon Insomnia, and when my nerves were 

 at the breaking point I used to take a train to Princeton 

 and idle in a canoe up the canal there, with the dreaming 

 towers of the college rising above the trees on the distant 

 hill and presently a sight of the quaint little whitewashed 

 lock house with its window boxes of gay geraniums. 

 That canal was better than medicine for me, soothing, 

 tranquil, sleepy. 



But how different an effect is wrought by even so 

 short a vertical as a ten-foot dam or natural waterfall. 

 Even though the stream is descending, the eye takes an 

 upward tilt, catching on the rocks at the side or the 

 smooth, gleaming columns of the water, and seeing in 

 imagination the higher level above. One views such a 

 cataract as Niagara, of course, with a confusion of emo- 

 tions, half stunned by its roar and overwhelmed by the 

 volume of its waters. Yet when you stand under the 

 falls and look up, you feel distinctly the mood of aspira- 

 tion, you are less aware of a descending deluge than of a 

 beautiful upward-soaring line ending in a suave, glitter- 

 ing curve that springs out of sight into the sun and 

 spray. One of the most perfect examples of the vertical 

 line in Nature, of course, is furnished by a pine grove on 

 the shore of a lake, where each tall, straight trunk stands 



