At one point along the Herring River in Harwich is a concrete fish ladder, twenty-five feet long and six feet wide. The pond above was high, after this same rainy spring, and the waters were roaring and frothing down. The alewives migrating upstream were being held back. Only a few I noticed were getting through. The flow had tremendous, deep force, so that the resting pools were not serving their function, and most of the fish that did manage by extraordinary effort to reach the head of water at the top were not able to pass it. The racing torrent dropped to a wide, shallow basin which ended in the river winding on within its banks. A continuous long line of fish kept swimming through to the bottom of the ladder, where they would vainly skip and twist and strain through the water’s force. Then they swung back in a semicircular arc across the basin and re-formed at its edge. There was a wide shiver on the water. They wheeled as in a dance, or like the planets in pursuit of light, where they ran up again into the flood. It happened time after time, in this futile but concurrent motion, a beauty to watch--its tension, effort, and relief were exactly co-ordinated with the water. These fish _were_ the water. But I saw in them the mechanics of breath ... contraction and expansion; and systole, diastole, balance and counterbalance, within the dynamics of all nature. They showed the push of life against a current, its running back and leaping forward, its fulfillment and defeat. It was the alewife circle again, as we have ours, in a motion of entirety; but almost impossible to translate. “You never enjoy the world aright,” wrote Thomas Traherne, “till the sea itself floweth in your veins.” In the knowing and encompassing sense of his word _enjoy_, we will never know alewives until the motion, lift, light, weight, and changing beauty of the water is in some degree a part of us. In any case, we will never build the perfect fishway. XIII Persistence When the little wire gate on the upper side of the seining pool was left open during the weekends the fish could pursue their destiny past the concessionaires. One weekday night during the last run in May some prankster took the gate out and caused much excitement in the alewives committee. “Gawd! Gawd! ... running all night long. Here’s the town selling this young feller the fish, and he doesn’t get any. We’ll have to put a padlock on it ...” etc. etc. I may have had such a delinquent impulse myself at one time, but I kept it way down.