lived, for they were as old as the centuries. Nothing of the mushroom
about them. There is a tradition that once in Revolutionary days,
Washington was carried across this ferry. But it is impossible to say
what the tradition is founded upon, and how much it is worth.

As to the river, there are rivers and rivers, as the saying is; at some
we marvel, some we fear and to some we make pilgrimages as to the Mecca
of the faithful. But the Merrimac is a river to be loved, and to be
loved the better the more familiar it is. What its poet, Whittier, says
about it must be literally true:

"Our river by its valley born
Was never yet forgotten."


It is worth while to try to imagine it as he writes it in "Cobbler
Keezer's Vision" two hundred and more years ago, when that old fellow
was so amazed at the prospect of mirth and pleasure among the
descendants of the stern Puritans that he dropped his lapstone into the
water in bewilderment.

This was the time when

"Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
The swift stream wound away,
Through birches and scarlet maples
Flashing in foam and spray."

"Down on the sharp-horned ledges
Plunging in steep cascade,