Yes, there is a good deal to be said in behalf of tree-worship; and when
I recline with my friend Tityrus beneath the shade of his favourite oak,
I consent in his devotions. But when I invite him with me to share my
orisons, or wander alone to indulge the luxury of grateful, unlaborious
thought, my feet turn not to a tree, but to the bank of a river, for
there the musings of solitude find a friendly accompaniment, and human
intercourse is purified and sweetened by the flowing, murmuring water.
It is by a river that I would choose to make love, and to revive old
friendships, and to play with the children, and to confess my faults,
and to escape from vain, selfish desires, and to cleanse my mind from
all the false and foolish things that mar the joy and peace of living.
Like David's hart, I pant for the water-brooks. There is wisdom in the
advice of Seneca, who says, "Where a spring rises, or a river flows,
there should we build altars and offer sacrifices."

The personality of a river is not to be found in its water, nor in its
bed, nor in its shore. Either of these elements, by itself, would be
nothing. Confine the fluid contents of the noblest stream in a walled
channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream; it becomes what
Charles Lamb calls "a mockery of a river--a liquid artifice--a wretched
conduit." But take away the water from the most beautiful river-banks,
and what is left? An ugly road with none to travel it; a long, ghastly
scar on the bosom of the earth.

The life of a river, like that of a human being, consists in the union
of soul and body, the water and the banks. They belong together. They
act and react upon each other. The stream moulds and makes the shore;
hollowing out a bay here, and building a long point there; alluring the
little bushes close to its side, and bending the tall slim trees over