far-stretching banks of this our river. Down by the flats, where the
tiny creek widened to a miniature swamp and emptied its placid waters
into the main stream, the red-wing blackbirds sounded their strange cry
among the cat-tails and the bull-rushes; the frogs croaked in ceaseless
and reverberant chorus; the catfish were ever hungry after dark, and the
night was broken by the glare of torches along the little bridge or in a
group of boats where fisher-lads kept close watch upon their corks. Far
below The Dam, where the changeful current had left a wide sand-bar and
a great tree-trunk stretched its fallen length across from the shore to
the water's edge, the mud-turtles basked in the sun-shine, and, at the
approach of Boyhood, glided or splashed to the safety of the water.

The banks of the river were a deep and silent jungle wherein all manner
of wild beasts and birds were hunted; its bosom was the vasty deep out
upon which our cherished argosies were sent. And how often their prows
were unexpectedly turned by some new current into mid-stream; sometimes
saved by an assortment of missiles breathlessly thrown to the far side,
to bring them, wave-washed, back to us; sometimes, alas, swept
mercilessly out to depths where only the eye and childish grief could
follow them over the big dam to certain wreckage in the whirlpools
below, but even then not abandoned until the shore had been patrolled
for salvage as far as courage held out.

Let's go back to the banks of our beloved river, you and I - and get up
early in the morning and run to the riffles near the old cooper-shop and
catch a bucket of shiners and chubs, and then hurry on to Boomer's dam -
or 'way upstream above the Island where we used to have the
Sunday-school picnics - or, maybe just stay at the in-town dam near the
flour mills and the saw-mills where old Shoemaker Schmidt used to catch
so many big ones - fat, yellow pike and broad black-bass. We will climb