In the cool days of September, when walking is a fine art, I love to accompany the lower portion of the old creek down to the river, following the little path made by farmer boys and fishermen.  The two posts at the fence by the roadside, set just far enough apart for a man to squeeze himself through, are the gates to a land elysian.  When I pass through them I am a thousand miles from the city with its toil and pain, its strife and sorrow.  Worldly cares drop from my back as I stand upon the brink of this creek and watch the water spreading itself out over the white sand.  Time and distance lose their force as factors in my life.  I have found and entered the lost lands of Theocritus.  Beneath this black ash, touched here and there with the purple wistfulness of the passing year, Pan might have sat to play his pipes, the Cyclops might have pleaded with the graceful Galatea.  This haze which hangs over the white oak grove, for aught I know, may be the incense from Druid fires.  Along this valley Chaucer’s Immortals may have gone a pilgriming, and in this bosky wood Robin Hood may have trained his band.  The legend that from this cliff an Indian lover on his favorite pony once leaped to the creek a hundred feet below and a mighty funeral ceremony was held at the Indian mound a little farther down the valley seems to be attested both by the cliff and the mound.  Before I have gone very far I am unconcernedly conscious that I have not the slightest idea in which direction lies the nearest road home, nor how far I have come.  But I know that somewhere down the lavender-veiled valley the creek and myself shall reach the river at last and all will be well.  There are so many beautiful things to see on the way that I would not hasten if I could.  Life and the future is much like that.

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There is a pleasant constancy in the companionship of a creek.  It is always at home when I call, always seems to wear a smile of welcome, always has something new to offer in the way of entertainment.  And it is changeless through the years.  If I were to return some September afternoon after an absence of half a lifetime I should expect to see a green heron fly up the creek when I reached this particular bend and to find the kingfisher in his accustomed place on the bare branch of this patriarchal oak.  At the next bend, where the current has cut the bank straight down I should look for the rows of holes made by the little colony of bank swallows.  I should steal around the sharp bend by the old willow to see a little sandpiper on the boulder in mid-stream as of old.  On a certain high grassy knoll I should find the woodchuck sunning himself and he would run towards his same old hole beneath the basswood tree, just as he does today.  On the swampy edge of the stream I should find the perennial blossoms of this same corymbed rattle-snake root and its interesting spear-shaped leaves reflected in the water.  From