the rivers unknown. "Sin writes histories," says Goethe; "goodness is silent."
The river affects men in a different way from the road. The dweller by the railroad is keen and quick to trade, and dicker, and undertake. The inhabitants of the river valleys are placid folk; farmers content with their peaceful and laborious lives.
Such homes as the poets have imagined are realities on every mile of the Delaware's banks. Never before, in the same space, have I seen so many quiet, contented, and gentle working people. Scores and hundreds of farm-houses we passed, surrounded with flowers and foliage, the easy-chairs waiting on the wide porch, with the women sitting sewing, the children playing near the house, the men working in the farmyard or in the spreading melon or peach fields, and the bright river moving forever before their eyes, with its great homely ferry-boat waiting below, where the shaded paths comes down the bank. Softly come to one's memory the lines of Bryant,
"O River, gentle River! gliding on
In silence underneath this cloud-flecked sky
Thine is a ministry that never rests,
Even while the living slumber.
At dead of night the child awakes and hears
Thy soft, familiar dashings, and is soothed,
And sleeps again."
