e came to him the dull boom of
blasting at the works.

Presently his mind turned to money and personal wealth. He had never
given it much thought, and only seriously considered money in terms of
what it could accomplish. Now he was receiving a very large salary and
had, as well, holdings in shares of the various companies. He dwelt on
the fact for a while, not that he had ever aimed at riches, but because
his financial position was infinitely better than ever before. It
would be easy, he reflected, to sell out, retire and live at ease. He
chuckled audibly at the picture, realizing that if he stopped work he
would die of a strangulated spirit.

Presently as he listened it seemed that the rapids took on a new pitch.
He had remarked before that, varying with the direction of the wind,
their call was not always in one great thundering diapason but
sometimes in a gigantic hubbub made up, as it were, of the confused
blending of many notes. Now, he imagined, he could discern them
all--querulous, angry, contented, pleading, defiant, threatening and
triumphant, and he perceived in them but the echo of changing human
moods. To-day he distinguished chiefly a voice that was dominant and
imperative.

Still in profound contemplation he surveyed the rapids' gigantic sweep,
the proud and tossing billows shot through with sunlight and vibrant
with speed. He made out those smooth and glistening emerald cellars
into which the flashing river pitched to rise again in tossing crests.
He followed back through the icy depths of the great lake stretching
westward to hidden swamps in that vast wilderness where these waters
were born, and shouting rivers down which they poured through silent
pools and over leaping cataracts to Superior. He saw still another
river that, growing in power and majesty, moved royally past the cities
of men, healing, sustaining and inspiring. And, last of all, he
perceived these waters of half a continent blend silently with the
brackish tides and lose themselves in the eternal sea.

This translation of vision moved him profoundly, for it was the nature
of his remote personality to be stirred more deeply by the revelations
of his own soul than by anything extraneous to its strange reactions.
Then gradually the voice of the river resolved itself into one clear
and unmistakable summons. "Use me while you may. I shall flow on
forever, while you have but a moment in eternity."

And this satisfied him.