I like both sight and sound. Express trains thunder and
lighten along; of freight trains, most of them very long, there cannot
be less than a hundred a day. At night far down you see the headlight
approaching, coming steadily on like a meteor. The river at night has
its special character-beauties. The shad fishermen go forth in their
boats and pay out their nets--one sitting forward, rowing, and one
standing up aft dropping it properly-marking the line with little
floats bearing candles, conveying, as they glide over the water, an
indescribable sentiment and doubled brightness. I like to watch the
tows at night, too, with their twinkling lamps, and hear the husky
panting of the steamers; or catch the sloops' and schooners' shadowy
forms, like phantoms, white, silent, indefinite, out there. Then the
Hudson of a clear moonlight night.
But there is one sight the very grandest. Sometimes in the fiercest
driving storm of wind, rain, hail or snow, a great eagle will appear
over the river, now soaring with steady and now overbended wings
--always confronting the gale, or perhaps cleaving into, or at times
literally _sitting_ upon it. It is like reading some first-class
natural tragedy or epic, or hearing martial trumpets. The splendid
bird enjoys the hubbub--is adjusted and equal to it--finishes it so
artistically. His pinions just oscillating--the position of his head
and neck--his resistless, occasionally varied flight--now a swirl,
now an upward movement--the black clouds driving--the angry wash
below--the hiss of rain, the wind's piping (perhaps the ice colliding,
grunting)--he tacking or jibing--now, as it were, for a change,
abandoning himself to the gale, moving with it with such velocity--and
now, resuming control, he comes up against it, lord of the situation
and the storm--lord, amid it, of power and savage joy.
Pages:
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229