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 A RIVER REVERIE

old Western river port, lying in a wrinkle of the hills,—a sharp slope down to the yellow water, glowing under the sun like molten bronze,—a broken hollow square of buildings framing it in, whose basements had been made green by the lipping of water during inundations periodical as the rising of the Nile,—a cannonade-rumble of drays over the boulders, and muffled-drum thumping of cotton bales,—white signs black-lettered with names of steamboat companies, and the green lattice-work of saloon doors flanked by empty kegs,—above, church spires cutting the blue,—below, on the slope, hogsheads, bales, drays, cases, boxes, barrels, kegs, mules, wagons, policemen, loungers, and roustabouts, whose apparel is at once as picturesque, as ragged, and as colorless as the fronts of their favorite haunts on the water-front. Westward the purple of softly-rolling hills beyond the flood, through a diaphanous veil of golden haze,—a marshaled array of white boats with arabesque lightness