16 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
World belongs inalienably to man as man and 
to man forever. 
What has become of the Delaware? It has 
vanished utterly. I see no single shimmer of 
any wave. What has happened to the Delaware? 
Why, Washington’s Crossing has happened to the 
Delaware. The river has been blotted out by 
the deed. The river has succumbed to the man. 
Man is greater than great rivers, and a great 
deed done in simple manliness for world’s man- 
hood and its gain and dominion is still the 
episode for which the rivers and the hills were 
made. 
Washington’s Crossing has blotted out the 
Delaware. Its channel might as well be dry. 
Rivers are they by whose banks and on whose 
currents mighty souls work mighty deeds whose 
unfretted message makes its way through all 
the skies of all the years. Man is majestical. 
And at the last man and his sublime activities 
are the solitary majesties upon this earth for 
which the rivers and the massy hills and the 
far-going seas are solely backgrounds dim as a 
shadow of a mountain on a stream by night. 
