changes the position of shadows of rock and cedar and flings handfuls of 
sunshine in my face out of sheer joy and sportiveness. The insects 
whine drowsily (though they mean no music), and the voice of St. Croix 
Falls sings on like a minstrel whose voice never grows husky nor weary, 
nor his hands tired of the harp he holds and thrums. 
And when the day snuffs out his light and falls asleep, the river 
sings on. In the day there were other voices; now the river sings 
alone. The voice of the waters is full of sorrow, like the story of a 
broken heart. Sometimes the note seems to me like a dying man 
who makes signs, beckoning you near with a world of intention in his 
eyes, draws your ear close to his lips, tries to frame lips to the words 
his heart would speak, but at the best his words are incoherent and he 
dies with his secret unrevealed or half revealed. So these waters. 
Their voices are, as says Longfellow: 
‘Full of hope and yet of heart-break;"' 
but seem to cry, ‘‘Hear my story, hear, hear my storyl’’ And at night, 
when other voices hush their jargon, then the waters have their way. 
Their day is night; and they catch stars in their tangle of waters 
and blur their light and seem to say, ‘‘This hour is mine,’’ and send 
up their mournful voices like incense through the darkness. How 
sweet it is to hear the music of waters come through the lattices of 
your sleep and dreams! I leave my window open and draw the bed-head 
close to the window-ledge, so that in my score of wakings in the night 
each tone of the singing waters may tell its story of lament; and | 
whisper, ‘‘I thank you for your melody,’’ and fall into slumber again. 
Nor is this all the St. Croix can offer, though this is much, and 
enough to change summer into a holiday. The stream’s voice suffices 
to change turmoil into quietness, and make room for the ineffable pres- 
ence of the Christ of God. Along the eastern acclivities running south- 
ward from the falls, spring after spring gushes out. You can not make 
an inventory of them. They baffle you. Every bank has its fountain, 
and | sit thus and write of them with the voices of these waters on 
every side. One bubbles with a boyish self-assurance; another sounds 
like a harp heard afar; another has haunting notes, quiet and tender as 
a melody half-forgotten, so that | am compassed about with music. 
Every mossy bank is a cluster from which nature is squeezing crystal 
wines. Here are moss, and fern, and shrub, and violet leaves, flower- 
less now, but reminiscent, all huddled here in quiet and hidden neighbor- 
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