this way—­water which it is so hard to think of as imprisoned or controlled, and which, too, however shallow, one always associates with mysterious depth—­the idea of thus carrying it across a valley high up in the air, so that one may look underneath it, underneath the bed in which it runs, and think of the fishes and the water-weeds and the waterbugs all being carried across with it, too—­this, I confess, has always seemed to me engagingly marvellous.  And I like, too, to think that the canal, whose daily business is to be a “common carrier” of others, thus occasionally tastes the luxury of being carried itself; as sometimes one sees on a freight car a new buggy, or automobile, or sometimes a locomotive, being luxuriously ridden along—­as though out for a holiday—­instead of riding others.

And talking of freight-cars, it came to me with a sense of illumination how different the word “Passaic” looks printed in white letters on the grey sides of grim produce-vans in begrimed procession, from the way it looks as it writes its name in wonderful white waterfalls, or murmurs it through corridors of that strange pillared and cake-shaped rock, amid the golden pomp of a perfect summer day.  For a short distance the Passaic and the canal run side by side, but presently they part company, and mile after mile the canal seems to have the world to itself, once in a great while finding human companionship in a shingled cottage half hidden among willows, a sleepy brick-field run on principles as ancient as itself, shy little girls picking flowers on its banks, or saucy boys disporting themselves in the old swimming-hole; and

Sometimes an angler comes and drops his hook
Within its hidden depths, and ’gainst a tree
Leaning his rod, reads in some pleasant book,
Forgetting soon his pride of fishery;
And dreams or falls asleep,
While curious fishes peep
About his nibbled bait or scornfully
Dart off and rise and leap.

Once a year, indeed, every one goes a-fishing along the old canal—­men, women, boys, and girls.  That is in spring, when the canal is emptied for repairs, the patching up of leaks, and so forth.  Then the fish lie glittering in the shallow pools, as good as caught, and happy children go home with strings of sunfish,—­“pumpkin-seeds” they call them,—­cat-fish, and the like picturesque unprofitable spoils, while graver fisher-folk take count of pickerel and bream.  This merry festival was over and gone, and the canal was all brimming with the lustral renewal of its waters, its depths flashing now and again with the passage of wary survivors of that spring battue.