And over the white creek-bottom, Under them every one, Went golden stars in the water, All luminous with the sun. But the bubbles brake on the surface, And under, the stars of gold Brake, and the hurrying water Flowed onward, swift and cold. II. I stood on the brink in manhood, And it came to my weary heart,-- In my breast so dull and heavy, After the years of smart,-- That every hollowest bubble Which over my life had passed Still into its deeper current Some sky-sweet gleam had cast; That, however I mocked it gayly, And guessed at its hollowness, Still shone, with each bursting bubble, One star in my soul the less. CITIES AND PARKS: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK. The first murderer was the first city-builder; and a good deal of murdering has been carried on in the interest of city-building ever since Cain's day. Narrow and crooked streets, want of proper sewerage and ventilation, the absence of forethought in providing open spaces for the recreation of the people, the allowance of intramural burials, and of fetid nuisances, such as slaughter-houses and manufactories of offensive stuffs, have converted cities into pestilential inclosures, and kept Jefferson's saying--"Great cities are great sores"--true in its most literal and mortifying sense. There is some excuse for the crowded and irregular character of Old-World cities. They grew, and were not builded. Accumulations of people, who lighted like bees upon a chance branch, they found themselves hived in obdurate brick and mortar before they knew it; and then, to meet the necessities of their cribbed, cabined, and confined condition, they must tear down sacred landmarks, sacrifice invaluable possessions, and trample on prescriptive rights, to provide breathing-room for their gasping population. Besides, air, water, light, and cleanliness are modern innovations. The nose seems to have acquired its sensitiveness within a hundred years,--the lungs their objection to foul air, and the palate its disgust at ditch-water like the Thames, within a more recent period. Honestly dirty, and robustly indifferent to what mortally offends our squeamish senses, our happy ancestors fattened on carbonic acid gas, and took the exhalations of graveyards and gutters with a placidity of stomach that excites our physiological admiration. If they died, it was not for want of air. The pestilence carried, them off,--and that was a providential enemy, whose home-bred origin nobody suspected.