e build altars and offer sacrifices."

The personality of a river is not to be found in its water, nor in its
bed, nor in its shore. Either of these elements, by itself, would be
nothing. Confine the fluid contents of the noblest stream in a walled
channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream; it becomes what
Charles Lamb calls "a mockery of a river--a liquid artifice--a wretched
conduit." But take away the water from the most beautiful river-banks,
and what is left? An ugly road with none to travel it; a long, ghastly
scar on the bosom of the earth.

The life of a river, like that of a human being, consists in the union
of soul and body, the water and the banks. They belong together. They
act and react upon each other. The stream moulds and makes the shore;
hollowing out a bay here, and building a long point there; alluring the
little bushes close to its side, and bending the tall slim trees over
its current; sweeping a rocky ledge clean of everything but moss, and
sending a still lagoon full of white arrow-heads and rosy knot-weed
far back into the meadow. The shore guides and controls the stream;
now detaining and now advancing it; now bending it in a hundred sinuous
curves, and now speeding it straight as a wild-bee on its homeward
flight; here hiding the water in a deep cleft overhung with green
branches, and there spreading it out, like a mirror framed in daisies,
to reflect the sky and the clouds; sometimes breaking it with sudden
turns and unexpected falls into a foam of musical laughter, sometimes
soothing it into a sleepy motion like the flow of a dream.

Is it otherwise with the men and women whom we know and like? Does not
the spirit influence the form, and the form affect the spirit? Can we
divide and separate them in our affections?

I am no friend to purely psychological attachments. In some unknown
future they may be satisfying, but in the present I want your words and
your voice with your thoughts, your looks and your gestures to interpret
your feelings. The warm, strong grasp of Greatheart's hand is as dear
to me as the steadfast fashion of his friendships; the lively, sparkling
eyes of the master of Rudder Grange charm me as much as the nimbleness
of his fancy; and the firm poise of the Hoosier Schoolmaster's shaggy
head gives me new confidence in the solidity of his views of life. I
like the pure tranquillity of Isabel's brow as well as her

"most silver flow
Of s