across a valley high up
in the air, so that one may look underneath it, underneath the bed in
which it runs, and think of the fishes and the water-weeds and the
waterbugs all being carried across with it, too--this, I confess, has
always seemed to me engagingly marvellous. And I like, too, to think
that the canal, whose daily business is to be a "common carrier" of
others, thus occasionally tastes the luxury of being carried itself; as
sometimes one sees on a freight car a new buggy, or automobile, or
sometimes a locomotive, being luxuriously ridden along--as though out
for a holiday--instead of riding others.

And talking of freight-cars, it came to me with a sense of illumination
how different the word "Passaic" looks printed in white letters on the
grey sides of grim produce-vans in begrimed procession, from the way it
looks as it writes its name in wonderful white waterfalls, or murmurs it
through corridors of that strange pillared and cake-shaped rock, amid
the golden pomp of a perfect summer day. For a short distance the
Passaic and the canal run side by side, but presently they part company,
and mile after mile the canal seems to have the world to itself, once in
a great while finding human companionship in a shingled cottage half
hidden among willows, a sleepy brick-field run on principles as ancient
as itself, shy little girls picking flowers on its banks, or saucy boys
disporting themselves in the old swimming-hole; and

Sometimes an angler comes and drops his hook
Within its hidden depths, and 'gainst a tree
Leaning his rod, reads in some pleasant book,
Forgetting soon his pride of fishery;
And dreams or falls asleep,
While curious fishes peep
About his nibbled bait or scornfully
Dart off and rise and leap.

Once a year, indeed, every one goes a-fishing along the old canal--men,
women, boys, and girls. That is in spring, when the canal is emptied for
repairs, the patching up of leaks, and so forth. Then the fish lie
glittering in the shallow pools, as good as caught, and happy children
go home with strings of sunfish,--"pumpkin-seeds" they call
them,--cat-fish, and the like picturesque unprofitable spoils, while
graver fisher-folk take count of pickerel and bream. This merry festival
was over and gone, and the canal was all brimming with the lustral
renewal of its waters, its depths flashing now and again with the
pass