The rivers are alive

occupy the forward Sixteen or eighteen bare to the waist,

rest of the world. Nowhere else are there such clever river-people, nowhere else is there so lavish an application of man-muscle to water movement. with junks propelled by rowers who deck and stand as they ply the oar. rowers man the bigger boats and as, they forge by in rhythmic swing, chanting their song of labor, the effect is fine. Save when there is a stiff breeze to sail with, the up-river junks are towed along the bank, and, as no tow-path has ever been built, the waste of toil in scrambling along slippery banks, clambering over rocks, or creeping along narrow ledges with the tow-rope is distressing to behold.

In the South, population is forced from the land onto the water and myriads pass their lives in sampans and house-boats. In good weather these poor families, living as it were in a single small room with a porch at either end, seem as happy as people anywhere. There is no landlord to threaten eviction, no employer to grind them down, no foreman to speed them up. There is infinite variety in the stirring life of river and foreshore that passes under their eyes; the babble and chatter never cease and no one need ever feel lonely. The tiny home can be kept with a Dutch cleanliness for water is always to be had with a sweep of the arm. They pay no rent and can change neighbors, residence, scenery or occupation when they please. No people is more natural, animated, and self-expressive, for they have simplified life without impoverishing it and have remained free even under the very harrow-tooth of poverty.

Their children, little river Arabs, have their wits sharpened early and not for long is the baby tied to a sealed empty jar that by floating will mark his location in case he tumbles into the water. The year-old child knows how

to take care of himself. The tot of three or four can handle the oar or the pole and is as sharp as our boys of six or seven.

Although the gates of the Chinese city close at night, the city is by no means so cut off from the open country

as with us. The man in the street never quite lets go of his kinsfolk in the rural village. When, a little while ago, shipbuilding and repairing became dull in Hong Kong, there was no hanging of the unemployed about the wharves, not because they had found other jobs, but because most of them had dispersed to their ancestral seats in the country, there to work on the old place till times improved. The man's family always give him a chance and there is rice in the pot for him and his. Nor is this tie with the mother-stem allowed to decay with the lapse of time. The successful merchant registers his male children in the ancestral temple of his clan, contributes to its upkeep and is entitled to his portion of roast-pork on the occasion of the yearly clan festival, visits the old home during the holidays, sends money back so that his people may buy more land, takes his children out so they will get acquainted and perhaps lets them pass their boyhood in the ancestral village so that, after he is gone, they will love and cherish the old tie to the soil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FOR FURTHER ILLUSTRATION

Burroughs, John: Birds and Poets.

Time and Change.

Mabie, H. W.: Essays on Nature and Culture.

Books and Culture.

Repplier, A.: A Plea for Humor. (In Points of View.)

The Fireside Sphinx.

Roosevelt, T.: A Nation of Pioneers. (In Library of Oratory, vol. 14.)

Life in the Wilderness. (From The Winning of the West, vol.
I, chapter V.)

Ross, E. A.: The Changing Chinese.

Changing America.

Van Dyke, H.: The Unknown Quantity.

Days Off.

The Ruling Passion.

Wilson, W.: Mere Literature and Other Essays.

III. Poetry

1. Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was intimately associated with Stoddard, Taylor, and Aldrich in literary work in New York before the Civil War. After the war he became a banker and has since been known in the literary world as the "banker poet." His verses all show the touch of the literary artist. He rendered a great service to the student of literature through his Victorian Anthology, published in 1895, and his American Anthology, published in 1900. (For readings see Bibliography, page 441.)

2. Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909) is one of the foremost American poets of this generation. He was born in New Jersey and early achieved a reputation in the literary world of New York City. For a long time he was editor of Scribner's Monthly, and later of the Century Magazine. His verses are polished and beautiful.

THE SONNET

What is a sonnet? 'Tis the pearly shell
That murmurs of the far-off murmuring sea;
A precious jewel carved most curiously;

It is a little picture painted well.

What is a sonnet? 'Tis the tear that fell
From a great poet's hidden ecstasy;

A two-edged sword, a star, a song,-ah me!

Sometimes a heavy-tolling funeral bell.

This was the flame that shook with Dante's breath,

The solemn organ whereon Milton played

And the clear glass where Shakespeare's shadow falls:
A sea this is,-beware who ventureth!

For like a fiord the narrow floor is laid

Mid-ocean deep to the sheer mountain walls.

Compare with the above: Wordsworth's Scorn Not the Sonnet and Nuns Fret Not; Symonds's The Sonnet; Rossetti's "A Sonnet is a Moment's Monument," from The House of Life: a Sonnet Sequence; Watts's The Sonnet's Voice.

3. Joaquin Miller (1841-1913) was one of the most pic turesque figures in American literature. For many years he lived alone in the mountains near Oakland, California. He is known as the "poet of the Sierras.”

BY THE PACIFIC OCEAN

Here room and kingly silence keep
Companionship in state austere;
The dignity of death is here,
The large, lone vastness of the deep;
Here toil has pitched his camp to rest;
The west is banked against the west.

Above yon gleaming skies of gold
One lone imperial peak is seen;
While gathered at his feet in green
Ten thousand foresters are told:
And all so still! so still the air
That duty drops the web of care.

Beneath the sunset's golden sheaves
The awful deep walks with the deep,
Where silent sea doves slip and sweep,
And commerce keeps her loom and weaves.
The dead red men refuse to rest;
Their ghosts illume my lurid West.

DEAD IN THE SIERRAS

His footprints have failed us,
Where berries are red,

And madroños are rankest,

The hunter is dead!

The grizzly may pass
By his half-open door;
May pass and repass
On his path, as of yore;

The panther may crouch
In the leaves on his limb;
May scream and may scream,-
It is nothing to him.

Prone, bearded, and breasted
Like columns of stone;

And tall as a pine

As a pine overthrown.

His camp-fires are gone,
What else can be done
Than let him sleep on

Till the light of the sun?

Ay, tombless! what of it?
Marble is dust,

Cold and repellent;

And iron is rust.

4. Will Carleton (1845-1912) was a well-known journalist of Brooklyn, New York. He wrote many humorous and pathetic poems. (See Bibliography, page 440, for suggested readings.)

5. Eugene Field (1850-1895) was a Chicago journalist. His verses of child life are among the most charming in our language. He has been called the Poet Laureate of Children.

LITTLE BOY BLUE

The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;

And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.