The River

IT is never supposed to be by chance that cities so often establish themselves on the banks of rivers. Their practical purpose in doing so is obvious enough. But practical purposes are frequently blinds, used to hoodwink a shallow world which does not care for ultimate reasons. Or, to put the matter another way, they are baits of expediency, laid to entrap careless mankind into a greater good. People may think they know why they build cities beside rivers, but the wise heavens must often smile at the reasons they give.

To connect them with other cities, forsooth; to promote their commerce; to bring them the material supplies on which they depend? Yes, all these reasons are cogent enough; but underneath them is the reason of reasons: that life’s diversity and tumult must ever seek to found itself on eternity’s repose.

Symbols are all but realities. They are nearer reality than anything that ever tries to express itself directly in this baffled and baffling world. A river flowing toward the sea is so significant of the sure, unhurried progress of our human destiny that, standing beside it, one feels his own fretful, hampered life escape from its artificial hindrances and slip smoothly, grandly, to regain its peace. Cities are, of course, the most complicated of all the artificial hindrances which man is inexplicably impelled to create for himself. It is well that they should have ever before their eyes the correcting vision of untroubled freedom.

One wonders sometimes how the rivers themselves feel about the alliance which they are obliged to maintain with man’s partial, restless ways. Take our own Hudson. No nobler, more typical stream is there in all the world. It rises among the distant, silent hills, cradled in the very peace which it sets forth to seek. The woods and the fields hallow it, the stars consecrate it. Nevertheless, it must seek that wider, deeper peace which it divines beyond, that peace which can only come from the utter giving of itself. So it starts out very purposefully, striving and hurrying at first, then going more gravely as it better understands the greatness of the consummation that lies before it. Between the purple hills, underneath the watchful sun and stars, it goes surely on its way, deepening and widening, a majestic presence. The sea draws it, draws it, as God draws the soul.

Is there not now a certain sense of pity — worse, of profanation — in the fact that, as it approaches its great end, its privacy is more and more encroached upon? Towns spring up on its banks, bridges and ferries span it, railroads shriek beside it, and boats crowd its quiet breast. Must it not long for solitude, as at last it comes in sight of the goal that has allured it through all these miles, as it feels the first brackish tidal thrust that tells it the sea is nigh? But there before it the city waits, the hardest, busiest, most restless city in the whole world; and under the city’s unsympathetic eyes the holy death and re-birth must be consummated. Alas! one could weep for the river.

It does not, however, weep for itself. Indeed, no! Its purpose is deeper than any faint-hearted human intentions of ours that have to be encouraged by circumstance; its peace is beyond any thwarting. The city need not flatter itself that the river regards it at all, thinks any more of the boats and the bridges than it thought of the fallen trees and the rocks up among the hills. The sea: that is all its concern, and to that it gives itself in the face of the universe. Let the proud ships and the squat ferryboats witness the surrender if they will. It knows no hesitation.

And yet, after all, one does sometimes hope that the river regards the city a little and is tender toward it. Not down where it actually meets the sea, — that would be asking too much of it, — but farther up where it first begins to skirt the troubled streets. It sweeps down upon them so grandly, curving between its two headlands, as if it surely had seen them and understood them and were coming straight to their rescue. A strong soul with an absolute purpose might be able to minister to another’s need without impeding its own invincible progress.

Certainly it seems to linger when it finds itself opposite the rows of houses, the canyoned streets. The soul of the city comes out to meet it and makes an unconscious appeal. What is here? What strange clamor? What uncertainty? What conflicting purposes? Does it not know what it wants, then, the city? But how should any created thing fail to know what it wants? Must the river stop and tell it? Well, it cannot stop; but it does its best, in passing, to share its certainty.

’It is all quite simple. I want the sea, and you want God,’ it says patiently over and over to the impatient streets.

How gentle it is in its bearing, almost wistful, as if for the first time in its life it found itself not quite sure of its environment. The strange appeal of the city troubles it a little. It gathers its dreams about it, partly because it divines them its best offering, partly because they suddenly seem under a threat. Misty, shimmering, opalescent, it steals through the dawn and the sunset, veiled in mystery.

‘Oh, hush! Oh, hush!’ it says to the city. ‘See how beautiful everything is, how quiet and safe. There is no need of making such a to-do.’

Its very industry — the business which is more and more thrust upon it — is a lesson to the rushing traffic of the streets. Every craft which invades it catches something of the grandeur of its motion, and bears itself with a certain inscrutable composure. Even the coal-barges. One has but to watch them dreaming along on their way downstream— their beautiful, warm, faded reds accenting the blue-gray and silver of their surroundings — to realize that, after all, the practical world makes a less strenuous demand than one had supposed. As for the sailboats, the sight of one of the great, serene, gray birds standing slowly in from the sea, is enough to arrest the busiest footsteps, call a halt to the processes of the most distracted brain. The rapt, mystical passing is like a prayer.

‘Thus and thus,’ says the river, ‘you should go about your business, bearing it all with you on your way into eternity. Confusion is only a hindrance and waste. Can you not understand?’

Can the city ever understand? Surely, it must, in time. Understanding is its desire and destiny. Its turbulence is so artificial that it would seem to have taken distraction on itself as a paradoxical means of realizing repose. It values peace too highly to be willing to accept it ready-made, but must work it out, prove it, win it. The river’s methods are much the same. It turned its back on its natal peace in the hope of something better. The river’s strife is less than the city’s. Perhaps that is only because its ultimate peace is less profound.

Meanwhile, its quiet presence, so near the rapture of its consummation, is a blessing and help to the city. It hushes it, frees it, admonishes it. As a child to its mother’s side, the complaining city clings to the banks of its river.