Little Rivers | Page 9

you is such
an one,--a man whom you have known in town as a lawyer or a doctor,
a merchant or a preacher, going about his business in the hideous
respectability of a high silk hat and a long black coat. How good it is to
see him now in the freedom of a flannel shirt and a broad-brimmed
gray felt with flies stuck around the band.
In Professor John Wilson's Essays Critical and Imaginative, there is a
brilliant description of a bishop fishing, which I am sure is drawn from
the life: "Thus a bishop, sans wig and petticoat, in a hairy cap, black
jacket, corduroy breeches and leathern leggins, creel on back and rod in
hand, sallying from his palace, impatient to reach a famous salmon-cast

ere the sun leave his cloud, . . . appears not only a pillar of his church,
but of his kind, and in such a costume is manifestly on the high road to
Canterbury and the Kingdom-Come." I have had the good luck to see
quite a number of bishops, parochial and diocesan, in that style, and the
vision has always dissolved my doubts in regard to the validity of their
claim to the true apostolic succession.
Men's "little ways" are usually more interesting, and often more
instructive than their grand manners. When they are off guard, they
frequently show to better advantage than when they are on parade. I get
more pleasure out of Boswell's Johnson than I do out of Rasselas or
The Rambler. The Little Flowers of St. Francis appear to me far more
precious than the most learned German and French analyses of his
character. There is a passage in Jonathan Edwards' Personal Narrative,
about a certain walk that he took in the fields near his father's house,
and the blossoming of the flowers in the spring, which I would not
exchange for the whole of his dissertation On the Freedom of the Will.
And the very best thing of Charles Darwin's that I know is a bit from a
letter to his wife: "At last I fell asleep," says he, "on the grass, and
awoke with a chorus of birds singing around me, and squirrels running
up the tree, and some woodpeckers laughing; and it was as pleasant and
rural a scene as ever I saw; and I did not care one penny how any of the
birds or beasts had been formed."
Little rivers have small responsibilities. They are not expected to bear
huge navies on their breast or supply a hundred-thousand horse-power
to the factories of a monstrous town. Neither do you come to them
hoping to draw out Leviathan with a hook. It is enough if they run a
harmless, amiable course, and keep the groves and fields green and
fresh along their banks, and offer a happy alternation of nimble rapids
and quiet pools,
"With here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling."
When you set out to explore one of these minor streams in your canoe,
you have no intention of epoch-making discoveries, or thrilling and
world-famous adventures. You float placidly down the long stillwaters,
and make your way patiently through the tangle of fallen trees that

block the stream, and run the smaller falls, and carry your boat around
the larger ones, with no loftier ambition than to reach a good
camp-ground before dark and to pass the intervening hours pleasantly,
"without offence to God or man." It is an agreeable and advantageous
frame of mind for one who has done his fair share of work in the world,
and is not inclined to grumble at his wages. There are few moods in
which we are more susceptible of gentle instruction; and I suspect there
are many tempers and attitudes, often called virtuous, in which the
human spirit appears to less advantage in the sight of Heaven.
It is not required of every man and woman to be, or to do, something
great; most of us must content ourselves with taking small parts in the
chorus. Shall we have no little lyrics because Homer and Dante have
written epics? And because we have heard the great organ at Freiburg,
shall the sound of Kathi's zither in the alpine hut please us no more?
Even those who have greatness thrust upon them will do well to lay the
burden down now and then, and congratulate themselves that they are
not altogether answerable for the conduct of the universe, or at least not
all the time. "I reckon," said a cowboy to me one day, as we were
riding through the Bad Lands of Dakota, "there's some one bigger than
me, running this outfit. He can 'tend to it well enough, while I smoke
my pipe after the round-up."
There is