FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



I happened to be fresh from a few days at 

 Niagara, and, moreover, I was a man who had all 

 his life taken blame to himself as being unwar- 

 rantably, almost disgracefully, insensible to the 

 charm of falling water. Nobody would ever stand 

 longer than I to muse upon a brook idling 

 through meadows or gurgling over pebbles down 

 a gentle slope ; and the narrower it was, the bet- 

 ter it was, almost, given only some fair measure 

 of clearness, movement enough to lend it here 

 and there an eddying dimple, and, most of all, a 

 look of being perennial. I hold in loving recollec- 

 tion two or three such modest streamlets, and at 

 this very minute can seem to see and hear them, 

 dipping smoothly over certain well-remembered 

 flat boulders, and bearing down a few tufts of 

 wavering sweet-flag leaves. Yes, I see them with 

 all plainness, though the breadth of a continent 

 stretches between them and this present dwell- 

 ing-place of mine, where near mountains half 

 circle me about and the Pacific surf dashes al- 

 most against my doorstep, but where there is 

 never a sound of running water all the long sum- 

 mer through. Often and often I say to myself, 

 "If there were only one dear Massachusetts 

 brook, to make the charm complete! " 



But with all this, as I say, I had always, to 

 my own surprise, made strangely small account 

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