Spoon River

“ In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked.
That was the home for me,
Though all my children had flown afar—
Which is the way of Nature—all but one.
The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home,
To be my help in my failing years
And the solace of his mother. ”

“ But you do not ask for water.
You cannot speak!
You do not need to speak—
Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
Yet they do not bring water!
They pass on, saying:
“The geranium wants water.”
And I, who had happiness to share
And longed to share your happiness;
I who loved you, Spoon River,
And craved your love,
Withered before your eyes, Spoon River—
Thirsting, thirsting,
Voiceless from chasteness of soul to ask you for love,
You who knew and saw me perish before you,
Like this geranium which someone has planted over me,
And left to die. ”

“ A joke on you, Spoon River?
Edmund Pollard I would I had thrust my hands of flesh
Into the disk-flowers bee-infested,
Into the mirror-like core of fire
Of the light of life, the sun of delight.
For what are anthers worth or petals
Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows
Of the heart of the flower, the central flame
All is yours, young passer-by;
Enter the banquet room with the thought;
Don’t sidle in as if you were doubtful
Whether you’re welcome—the feast is yours!
Nor take but a little, refusing more
With a bashful “Thank you”, when you’re hungry.
Is your soul alive? ”

“ I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River.
Look at my elm!
Sprung from as good a seed as his,
Sown at the same time,
It is dying at the top:
Not from lack of life, nor fungus,
Nor destroying insect, as the sexton thinks.
Look, Samuel, where the roots have struck rock,
And can no further spread.
And all the while the top of the tree
Is tiring itself out, and dying,
Trying to grow. ”

“ Which bring honor to the dead, who lived in shame
Harry Carey Goodhue You never marveled, dullards of Spoon River,
When Chase Henry voted against the saloons
To revenge himself for being shut off. ”

“ Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River.
I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her,
Held such converse afar with the great
Who knew her better than I.
Oh, there is neither lesser nor greater,
Save as we make her greater and win from her keener delight. ”

“ He brought me to Spoon River and we lived here
For twenty years—they thought that we were married
This oak tree near me is the favorite haunt
Of blue jays chattering, chattering all the day.
And why not? for my very dust is laughing
For thinking of the humorous thing called life.
Isa Nutter Doc Meyers said I had satyriasis,
And Doc Hill called it leucæmia—
But I know what brought me here:
I was sixty-four but strong as a man
Of thirty-five or forty. ”

“ And the weary steps of old Doc Hill
Sounded like one who walks in sleep,
And a far-off rooster crew.
And now another is watching Spoon River
As others watched before me.
And here we lie, Doc Hill and I
Where none breaks through and steals,
And no eye needs to guard. ”

“ And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety—six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life. ”

“ And out in the cold stood all my followers:
Young idealists, broken warriors
Hobbling on one crutch of hope—
Souls that staked their all on the truth,
Losers of worlds at heaven’s bidding,
Watching the Devil kick the Millennium
Over the Golden Mountain.
Peleg Poague Horses and men are just alike.
There was my stallion, Billy Lee,
Black as a cat and trim as a deer,
With an eye of fire, keen to start,
And he could hit the fastest speed
Of any racer around Spoon River. ”

“ On this river is a large settlement of northern people, and many families from the State of New-Hampshire. Below this, the most material tributaries are the Vermillion and Sangamon from the east, and Spoon river from the west. Whatever others may say, I cannot call the Illinois a pleasant stream. It has a marsh on one side or the other from its mouth to its source, and is full of shoals and sand bars. I passed down the river in a boat that drew less than two feet water, but it often run aground. The worst bar is just below Beardstown. ”

“ Hortense Robbins My name used to be in the papers daily
As having dined somewhere,
Or traveled somewhere,
Or rented a house in Paris,
Where I entertained the nobility.
I was forever eating or traveling,
Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.
Now I am here to do honor
To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.
No one cares now where I dined,
Or lived, or whom I entertained,
Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden. ”

“ And kept the children free from that disgrace,
To grow up into moral men and women,
Happy themselves, a credit to the village.
Thomas Ross, Jr. This I saw with my own eyes: A cliff—swallow
Made her nest in a hole of the high clay-bank
There near Miller’s Ford.
But no sooner were the young hatched
Than a snake crawled up to the nest
To devour the brood.
Then the mother swallow with swift flutterings
And shrill cries
Fought at the snake,
Blinding him with the beat of her wings,
Until he, wriggling and rearing his head,
Fell backward down the bank
Into Spoon River and was drowned. ”

“ The secret of the soil—to receive seed.
The secret of the seed—the germ.
The secret of man—the sower.
The secret of woman—the soil.
My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.
Adam Weirauch I was crushed between Altgeld and Armour.
I lost many friends, much time and money
Fighting for Altgeld whom Editor Whedon
Denounced as the candidate of gamblers and anarchists.
Then Armour started to ship dressed meat to Spoon River,
Forcing me to shut down my slaughter-house
And my butcher shop went all to pieces.
The new forces of Altgeld and Armour caught me
At the same time. ”

“ The cohoe took a 2-inch silver doctor and rose steadily to the fly.
Spoons and Minnows.—Spoons can be obtained locally, either in Vancouver or in the Campbell River Store, but I should recommend their being purchased in England. The spoon specially made by Farlow is three inches long, silver on both sides, with a hook attached to the end of the spoon by a strong wire loop.
Local tastes varied, and in the local store there were many varieties of spoons. One year dull lead spoons were supposed to be most killing—another year it would be brass. Each fisherman had his special fancy. ”

“ The soul of the river had entered my soul,
And the gathered power of my soul was moving
So swiftly it seemed to be at rest
Under cities of cloud and under
Spheres of silver and changing worlds—
Until I saw a flash of trumpets
Above the battlements over Time. ”

“ It is deep, and abounds in fish, particularly in salmon trout, common trout, carp, and a small, oily fish, very delicious, and tasting like the smelt. The Spokan river rises in the lake, and crosses the whole plain of the Cœur d'Alènes. The valley [Pg 366] that borders above the lake is from four to five miles wide, exceedingly fertile, and the soil from ten to fifteen feet deep. Every spring, at the melting of the snow, it is subject to inundations, which scarcely ever last longer than four or five days; at the same time augmenting, as in Egypt, the fertility of the soil. ”

“ Here the Spokane River cuts its way towards the Columbia. North of the junction, State 22 begins to wind down a steep grade on the west side of the narrow, deep Spokane River Canyon. Sharp curves (caution; dangerous when wet) , rocky cuts, precipitous cliffs, and patches of timber on high hills mark the route. For several miles it skirts the western rim of the river; now and then a crudely made road leads off to some ranch house hidden in a deep draw between the hills. Drab farmhouses, in windswept yards, cling to the steep hillsides or cower behind protecting bluffs. ”

“ In all directions around Colville and Kettle Falls, up the Sans Poil and Kettle rivers, are opening mines and farms, one of the most promising sections of all the promising State of Washington. Time forbids us to visit all the lakes in this wonderful lake section. But we must see the most important. While at Spokane, we should not fail to go, by trolley or train or auto or horseback, to the greatest of all Spokane resorts, Cœur d'Alene Lake. ”

“ The city of Spokane, in eastern Washington, clearly illustrates the control which physical features exert upon the settlements and industries of men. The Spokane River, soon after issuing from Cœur d'Alene Lake, flows out over the volcanic plains of Washington. In the course of a few miles it descends into a shallow cañon by a series of cascades and waterfalls. The water-power furnished by these falls has determined the position and growth of Spokane. The falls brought sawmills and manufacturing plants, and these in turn brought people and railroads. ”

“ This canal, which is the oldest in the country, and has even an antique look beside the more modern railroads, is fed by the Concord, so that we were still floating on its familiar waters. It is so much water which the river lets for the advantage of commerce. There appeared some want of harmony in its scenery, since it was not of equal date with the woods and meadows through which it is led, and we missed the conciliatory influence of time on land and water; but in the lapse of ages, Nature will recover and indemnify herself, and gradually plant fit shrubs and flowers along its borders. ”

“ From Ball’s Hill to Billerica meeting-house, the river was still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, dark, and dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and sometimes cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a long woodland lake bordered with willows. For long reaches we could see neither house nor cultivated field, nor any sign of the vicinity of man. Now we coasted along some shallow shore by the edge of a dense palisade of bulrushes, which straightly bounded the water as if clipt by art, reminding us of the reed forts of the East-Indians, of which we had read ”

“ At least, it was to Manson, to whom193 such an experience was entirely new. When they reached Spoon Island he went into raptures over it, for it was a rarity, even among the many beautiful ones he had visited. As its name implied, it was shaped like a spoon, about five hundreds rods long and formed of white sand, with a growth of green sedge grass all over it. On the broadest part was a cluster of spruce forming a little thicket and beside this, and entered by a narrow inlet the tiniest bit of a harbor, just large enough to shelter a small sloop. ”

“ If the geological survey was correct, the basin would be a good ten feet below the water-bearing gravel strata that should be carrying the bulk of the lost water from the ruptured underground Spokima Reservoir fifteen miles upstream. The river bed lay in a slight natural fault and the water should follow beneath the old river bed without too much side loss.
In a half hour the six units had carved out a cavern in the solid rock fifty feet high and extending six hundred feet upstream from the vertical bore. ”

“ Captain Armstrong left by train for Nelson the evening of the 27th, and the following morning Major Laird drove Roos and me back to Gerome. For a considerable part of the distance we followed the highly picturesque route along the Spokane River, stopping for lunch at the hydro-electric plant of the Washington Power Company at Long Lake. This enterprising corporation has power installations already in operation on the Spokane which must make that stream pretty nearly the most completely harnessed river of its size in America. ”

“ On the whole, Concord River is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard. Neither is it without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance. Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it. ”

“ Emptying into the Scaroon River, just below the lake, is a superb mountain stream, known as Trout Brook. It is thirty feet wide, twelve miles long, and comes rushing down the mountains, forming a thousand waterfalls and pools, and filling its narrow valley with an everlasting roar of music. Not only is it distinguished for the quality and number of its trout, but it possesses one attraction which will pay the tourist for the weary tramp he must undergo to explore its remote recesses. ”

“ Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by the sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river was devoted from the first to the service of manufactures. Issuing from the iron region of Franconia, and flowing through still uncut forests, by inexhaustible ledges of granite, with Squam, and Winnipiseogee, and Newfound, and Massabesic Lakes for its mill-ponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, where it has been offering its privileges in vain for ages, until at last the Yankee race came to improve them. ”

“ SPOKANE FALLS
is one of those miracles possible only in the alert, aggressive West. When Mr. Hayes was inaugurated it was a blank wilderness. Not a single civilized being lived within a hundred miles of it. One day in 1878 a white man came along in a "bull team," saw the wild rapids and the mighty falls of the Spokane River, reflected on the history of St. Paul and Minneapolis with their little Falls of St. Anthony, looked at the tide of immigration just turning toward the farther Northwest, and concluded he would sit right down where he was and wait for a city to grow around him. ”