arkled and danced and went on, now in a smooth amber current, now
fretted by the pebbles, but always with that continuous busy song!
John never knew that noise to cease, and he doubted not, if he stayed
here a thousand years, that same loud murmur would fill the air.

On it went, under the wide spans of the old wooden, covered bridge,
swirling around the great rocks on which the piers stood, spreading
away below in shallows, and taking the shadows of a row of maples
that lined the green shore. Save this roar, no sound reached him,
except now and then the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, or the
muffled far-off voices of some chance passers on the road. Seen from
this high perch, the familiar village, sending its brown roofs and
white spires up through the green foliage, had a strange aspect, and
was like some town in a book, say a village nestled in the Swiss
mountains, or something in Bohemia. And there, beyond the purple
hills of Bozrah, and not so far as the stony pastures of Zoah,
whither John had helped drive the colts and young stock in the
spring, might be, perhaps, Jerusalem itself. John had himself once
been to the land of Canaan with his grandfather, when he was a very
small boy; and he had once seen an actual, no-mistake Jew, a
mysterious person, with uncut beard and long hair, who sold
scythe-snaths in that region, and about whom there was a rumor that he
was once caught and shaved by the indignant farmers, who apprehended
in his long locks a contempt of the Christian religion. Oh, the world
had vast possibilities for John. Away to the south, up a vast basin of
forest, there was a notch in the horizon and an opening in the line of
woods, where the road ran. Through this opening John imagined an army
might appear, perhaps British, perhaps Turks, and banners of red and
of yellow advance, and a cannon wheel about and point its long nose,
and open on the valley. He fancied the army, after this salute,
winding down the mountain road, deploying in the meadows, and giving
the valley to pillage and to flame. In which event his position would
be an excellent one for observation and for safety. While he was in
the height of this engagement, perhaps the horn would be blown from
the back porch, reminding him that it was time to quit cutting brush
and go for the cows. As if there were no better use for a warrior and
a poet in New England than to send him for the cows!

John knew a boy--a bad enough boy I daresay--who aft