r days, strange premonitory noises had run across the shivering
surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent
booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato
crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent
bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the
disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a line of
cavalry unsheathing sabres.

But all the while, no show of violence--only the awful quietness with
deluge potential in it. The lion was crouching for the leap.

Then one day under the warm sun a booming as of distant big guns began.
Faster and louder came the dull shaking thunders, and passed swiftly up
and down, drawling into the distance. Fissures yawned, and the sound of
the grumbling black water beneath came up. Here and there the surface
lifted--bent--broke with shriekings, groanings, thunderings. And
then----

The giant turned over, yawned and got to his feet, flinging his arms
about him! Barriers formed before him. Confidently he set his massive
shoulders against them--smashed them into little blocks, and went on
singing, shouting, toward the sea. It was a glorious victory. It made me
very proud of my big brother. And yet all the while I dreaded him--just
as I dread the caged tiger that I long to caress because he is so strong
and so beautiful.

Since then I have changed somewhat, though I am hardly as tall, and
certainly not so courageous as Alexander. But I have felt the sinews of
the old yellow giant tighen about my naked body. I have been bent upon
his hip. I have presumed to throw against his Titan strength the craft
of man. I have often swum in what seemed liquid madness to my boyhood.
And we have become acquainted through battle. No friends like fair foes
reconciled!

And I have been panting on his bars, while all about me went the lisping
laughter of my brother. For he has the strength of a god, the headlong
temper of a comet; but along with these he has the glad, mad,
irresponsible spirit of a boy. Thus ever are the epic things.

The Missouri is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the
beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace--and His precept
was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is
a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a
mummy, periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a convenient
geographical boundary line; th