And then, in our cities, instead of beautifying the banks and profiting by the scenery, foolish men turn the back doors of their houses upon the rivers, build barns upon their banks, make of them the dumping places into which they throw their rubbish, street sweepings, and old tin cans, everything that will soil the water and spoil the scenery.

Do you not think that some day we will again come back to the old love of the river, even if we do not need it so much as a highway now? for railroads go faster. We will keep them clean and beautiful, for the pleasure and the health they yield. You have heard of what a dirty thing the Chicago river is, how unpleasant it is both to the sense of sight and to the sense of smell. It is very much the same with many of the other rivers that flow through our great cities, and even smaller towns. Some day the children of our public schools, who are now studying these things, will grow up, and they will find out how to purify our streams. They will restore their beauty. They will love the fish in the water so much that they will prefer seeing them alive to eating them when dead. They will give back the rivers to the birds, that will sing unmolested upon their banks, and raise their little ones undisturbed in their nests, built low among the sedges, or swinging loftily in the poplar boughs above.

So you see, my children, to know the river is to know much of the geology of the world, much of the plant and animal life of the world, very much of the history of man, and very much of the higher hopes and aspirations, the poetry, the morality, and the religion of the human soul. The rivers were here before man was. They invited man. They nursed him. They fed him. They marked the places for his settlements. They helped the organization of the state.

By the way, as a closing lesson, suppose you find out how many of the states of our Union were named after rivers, and see how many of the river names you can discover the meaning of; for the rivers were on the earth before they were named. The names are of men, and some of them are very suggestive. The rivers are of God. They belong to nature, and they show forth the laws of nature, which are always the laws of God.