Front matter
Reading edition
The Spokesman July, 1925
The brook laughed and sang. When it encountered hard places in its bed, it hurled its water in sparkling dance figures up into the moonlight.
It sang louder, louder; danced faster, faster, with a coquettish splash! at the vegetation on its banks.
At last it danced boisterously into the bosom of the St. John’s, upsetting the whispering hyacinths who shivered and blushed, drunk with the delight of moon kisses.
The Mighty One turned peevishly in his bed and washed the feet of the Palmetto palms so violently that they awoke and began again the gossip they had left off when the Wind went to bed. A palm cannot speak without wind. The river had startled it also, for the winds sleep on the bosom of waters.
The palms murmured noisily of seasons and centuries, mating and birth and the transplanting of life. Nature knows nothing of death.
The river spoke to the brook.
“Why, O Young Water, do you hurry and hurl yourself so riotously about with your chatter and song? You disturb my sleep.”
“Because, O Venerable One,” replied the brook, “I am young. The flowers bloom, the trees and wind say beautiful things to me: there are lovers beneath the orange trees on my banks,—but most of all because the moon shines upon me with a full face.”
“That is not sufficient reason for you to disturb my sleep,” the river retorted. “I have cut down mountains and moved whole valleys into the sea, and I am not so noisy as you are.”
The river slapped its banks angrily.
“But,” added the brook diffidently, “I passed numbers of lovers as I came on. There was also a sweet-voiced night-bird.”
“No matter, no matter!” scolded the river. “I have seen millions of lovers, child. I have borne them up and down, listened to those things that are uttered more with the breath than with the lips, gathered infinite tears, and some lovers have even flung themselves upon the soft couch I keep in my bosom, and slept.”
“Tell me about some of them!” eagerly begged the brook.
“Oh, well,” the river muttered, “I am wide awake now, and I suppose brooks must be humored.”