Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/309

276 vain. While under water, on the dive, or crawling along the bottom on hands and knees, the river was a drear and silent sluice. At last we got our chins on the bottom, each on a stone, and we heard it,—oh! we heard such melodious discord, such a mixture of near and remote echo-like sweetness as can only be imagined in dreams. The river became as full of music as it was of water, and the inexpressible fusion of notes played through our senses like intoxication. Smith was twenty or thirty feet from me, and in deeper water; but every sweep he gave the pebbles sounded to me like a thousand cow-bells melted into liquid harmony. Never, until we go to the same spot again, shall we hear such strange, suppressed, elfin music.

Now, Athens, go down and bathe at the place where we had this intoxicating bath; and believe that never was there siren or naiad in the rivers or springs of old Athens to ravish with sweeter melody than your own beautiful Susquehanna holds for you.

It would be better, perhaps, if I could follow, the river features seriatim, as we saw them; but then there are so many miles of every river that are only one uninteresting feature. No one cares for the names of little unheard-of villages, themselves quite featureless. Some whole days we