on guard | will speak of ‘‘environment’’ next—lest I do, let me hasten 
on, tightening my belt for speed); and in consequence their goings are 
a series of sweet lawlessnesses. A bright stream in Syria was named 
Meander, and from its multitudinous wanderings we keep the word 
“meander” to mean a journey in winding ways. The reason why every 
stream is beautiful is because every stream is bent on meandering. 
Lovers can not keep to 
a sidewalk. They give 
scant attention to direc- 
tion. A stream is the 
same. | think it has no 
compass and does not 
know it can steer by the 
pole star. I rejoice in 
its ignorance, I am right 
glad it has no theodolite 
and chain, but has a 
sweet unreasonableness 
and pouting self-will and 
strict inattention to rules 
and advices—the stream 
«“doeth whatsoever it 
will.” Who but God THROUGH LONG GRASSES 
taught the waters this 
quaint unreasonableness? Every step the stream takes is a deviation. 
Being in no hurry it may be as leisurely as a summer afternoon. 
Streams are in no sweaty haste, but with blunt Walt Whitman, may 
loaf and invite their soul; and so it happens that they will spend a half 
day in your field when they might get beyond it in a jiffy. I love their 
loitering. The streams go nosing around, digging under banks, stop- 
ping to demolish a sandbar, then waiting to build a sandbar, putting a 
curve on everything as a rainbow does, building little peninsulas where 
a wild flower may root, laving the roots a sycamore has inadvertently 
thrust too near the stream, dawdling around in pools, chasing its own 
bubbles as a kitten runs after its own tail (poor silly), making froth at 
the edge of some root which has with temerity walked out across the 
stream, pouring down its little world of waters from a play-ledge of rocks, 
and so has dug a little hollow where the waters stay when the stream 
runs dry, running around and building an island so they may study 
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