about him! Barriers formed before him. Confidently he set his massive
shoulders against them--smashed them into little blocks, and went on
singing, shouting, toward the sea. It was a glorious victory. It made me
very proud of my big brother. And yet all the while I dreaded him--just
as I dread the caged tiger that I long to caress because he is so strong
and so beautiful.

Since then I have changed somewhat, though I am hardly as tall, and
certainly not so courageous as Alexander. But I have felt the sinews of
the old yellow giant tighen about my naked body. I have been bent upon
his hip. I have presumed to throw against his Titan strength the craft
of man. I have often swum in what seemed liquid madness to my boyhood.
And we have become acquainted through battle. No friends like fair foes
reconciled!

And I have been panting on his bars, while all about me went the lisping
laughter of my brother. For he has the strength of a god, the headlong
temper of a comet; but along with these he has the glad, mad,
irresponsible spirit of a boy. Thus ever are the epic things.

The Missouri is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the
beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace--and His precept
was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is
a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a
mummy, periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a convenient
geographical boundary line; the Hudson, an epicurean philosopher.

But the Missouri--my brother--is the eternal Fighting Man!

I love things that yearn toward far seas: the singing Tennysonian brooks