1 10 "Mature Stufcies in Berkshire. 



stuffs, and chokes it with sewage, and stifles it in 

 steam-boilers. He tries to starve it to death by cut- 

 ting off the forest on the mountains whence it feeds 

 itself. He sedulously kills all the fish between its 

 banks. And still the river forgives all and tries its 

 best to keep up the struggle for existence and incid- 

 entally to bless the oppressor with uses and with 

 graces. Here in our Housatonic, is a noble example 

 of how hard a river dies. It keeps up a magnificent 

 fight against the vandal powers of the human race, 

 as they fetter it with dams and degrade it in sluice- 

 ways and mill-ponds. It yields the service de- 

 manded of it, albeit with many a passing fury, 

 fretting itself into foam and broken water. And just 

 as soon as it escapes from man's clutches it takes up 

 its old life of beauty and of blessing. At Glendale, 

 for example, after it has been corralled in a mill-pond 

 and pitched over a dam, it recovers itself almost in- 

 stantly, and before it is pulled into the traces again 

 at Housatonic, it resumes its placid flow, and gathers 

 shadows from the wooded banks, and sparkles in 

 the sunlight as if it never had been forced to dirty 

 work and never would be again. After passing Great 

 Barrington, too, the stream which has been com- 

 pelled to sweat and strain, and scour and scrub for 

 the whole town, resumes its fair aspect and behaves 

 precisely as if it never had drained a sewer or fed a 

 boiler. In its gracious and serene flow through the 

 broad meadows of Stockbridge there is no reminis- 

 cence whatsoever of its labours at the mill-wheels in 



