£be Berkshire 1Riv>er. 1 1 1 



Lee. How can one help a species of admiration for 

 the pluck and purpose of the resolute little river, and 

 its unswerving effort not to be beaten, not to be 

 other than it started to be up in the fields of Pitts- 

 field, and the lanes of Lanesboro, and the fords of 

 New Ashford. One rarely finds a river which so 

 persistently keeps up its character for picturesque- 

 ness and rural beauty as the Housatonic, as long as 

 it continues to be a Berkshire stream. Like a tidy 

 housekeeper, as soon as it finishes with the day's 

 tasks, the work that soils and roils, it straightway 

 smooths itself out, and arrays itself afresh, and in 

 clean garb and with placid demeanour, asserts its 

 dignities and its superiority to the drudgeries of ex- 

 istence. It does not hold itself above the utilities ; 

 neither does it forget how to be beautiful. 



The Housatonic ends its career, as so many noble 

 rivers do, amid sordid and prosaic surroundings 

 which plainly reveal its subjection to man and his 

 hard mastership. Between banks of coarse sedges, 

 and over mud-flats which reek with foul substances 

 and fouler smells, its waters mingle with the salt 

 tides from the Sound in a brackish blend which is 

 teased by the keels of ignoble scows, and tugs, and 

 dredges, and mud-craft of every sort. The railway, 

 which has crossed and recrossed it eight times since 

 it became a river at Pittsfield, once more mounts on 

 trestle-stilts and goes over at Stratford for the ninth 

 and last time. The caressing arms of the land reach 

 out for one last embrace as its waters go sliding past 



