There were low rolling hills, covered and crowned with a thick growth of hazel thickets and short oaks. Between these hills ran long strips of green, strung on tiny bands of silver. And as these bands moved and thickened and braided themselves together, I seemed to see a procession of the trees. The cottonwoods halted in their march. The box-elders, and maples, and water-elms, and walnuts and such big trees swept grandly in with waving banners, and wound on and on in long procession, even down to two blue distant hills set at the edge of the world, unpassed guardians of a land of dreams. Ah, well-a-day! I look back at those two hills now, and the land of dreams lies still beyond them, it is true; but it is now upon the side whence I first gazed. It is back there, where one can not go again; back there, along that crystal, murmuring mystery of the little stream one knew when one was young! [Illustration] Ah, little river, little river, but I am coming back again. Once more I push away the long grass and the swinging boughs, and look into your face. Again I dabble my bare feet, and scoop up my straw hat full, and watch the tiny streams run down. Again I stand, bare and small and trembling, wondering if I can swim across. And--listen, little river--again at the same old place I shall cut me the willow wand, and down the long slope to the certain place I knew I am going to hurry, running the last quarter of a mile in sheer expectation, but forgetting not the binding on of the tough linen line. And now I cast my gaudy float on that same swinging, wimpling, dimpling eddy, and let it swim in beneath the bank. And--No! Can it be? Have I here, now, again, plainly in my hands, the strange and wonderful creature, the gift of the little stream? Is this its form, utterly lovable? Is this its coat, wrought of cloth of gold and silver? Are these diamonds its eyes?... Oh, little river, little river, give me back this gift to keep for ever! Why take such things from us?... All I have I will give to you, if you will but give back to me, to have by me all the time, this little fish from the pool beneath the boughs. I have hunted well for him, believe me, hard and faithfully in many a place, but he is no longer there. I find him no longer, even in the remotest spots I search.... But this is he! This, in my hands, here in actual sight, is my first, my glorious, iridescent, radiant prize! Pray you, behold the glittering!