Now in talking about women it is prudent to disguise a prejudice like
this, in the security of a dead language, and to intrench it behind
a fortress of reputable authority. But in lowlier and less dangerous
matters, such as we are now concerned with, one may dare to speak in
plain English. I am all for the little rivers. Let those who will, chant
in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and Mississippi and Niagara, but my
prose shall flow--or straggle along at such a pace as the prosaic
muse may grant me to attain--in praise of Beaverkill and Neversink
and Swiftwater, of Saranac and Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and
Aroostook and Moose River. "Whene'er I take my walks abroad," it shall
be to trace the clear Rauma from its rise on the fjeld to its rest
in the fjord; or to follow the Ericht and the Halladale through the
heather. The Ziller and the Salzach shall be my guides through the
Tyrol; the Rotha and the Dove shall lead me into the heart of England.
My sacrificial flames shall be kindled with birch-bark along the wooded
stillwaters of the Penobscot and the Peribonca, and my libations drawn
from the pure current of the Ristigouche and the Ampersand, and my altar
of remembrance shall rise upon the rocks beside the falls of Seboomok.

I will set my affections upon rivers that are not too great for
intimacy. And if by chance any of these little ones have also become
famous, like the Tweed and the Thames and the Arno, I at least will
praise them, because they are still at heart little rivers.

If an open fire is, as Charles Dudley Warner says, the eye of a room;
then surely a little river may be called the mouth, the most expressive
feature, of a landscape. It animates and enlivens the whole scene. Even
a railway journey becomes tolerable when the track follows the course of
a running stream.