_aliveness_. From its tiny bubbling entry into the world among the
pinewood gardens of Donaueschingen, until this moment when it began to
play the great river-game of losing itself among the deserted swamps,
unobserved, unrestrained, it had seemed to us like following the growth
of some living creature. Sleepy at first, but later developing violent
desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some
huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our
little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes,
yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come
inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.

How, indeed, could it be otherwise, since it told us so much of its
secret life? At night we heard it singing to the moon as we lay in our
tent, uttering that odd sibilant note peculiar to itself and said to be
caused by the rapid tearing of the pebbles along its bed, so great is
its hurrying speed. We knew, too, the voice of its gurgling whirlpools,
suddenly bubbling up on a surface previously quite calm; the roar of its
shallows and swift rapids; its constant steady thundering below all mere
surface sounds; and that ceaseless tearing of its icy waters at the
banks. How it stood up and shouted when the rains fell flat upon its
face! And how its laughter roared out when the wind blew upstream and
tried to stop its growing speed! We knew all its sounds and voices, its
tumblings and foamings, its unnecessary splashing against the bridges;
that self-conscious chatter when there were hills to look on; the
affected dignity of its speech when it passed through the little towns,
far too important to laugh; and all these faint, sweet whisperings when
the sun caught it fairly in some slow curve and poured down upon it till
the steam rose.

It was full of tricks, too, in its early life before the great world