A set of essays about life, the world, and living. About fishing, too (Henry Van Dyke had a passion for fishing). Here's the start of the eponymous essay: A river is the most human and companionable of all inanimate things. It has a life, a character, a voice of its own, and is as full of good fellowship as a sugar-maple is of sap. It can talk in various tones, loud or low, and of many subjects, grave and gay. Under favorable circumstances it will even make a shift to sing, not in a fashion that can be reduced to notes and set down in black and white on a sheet of paper, but in a vague, refreshing manner, and to a wandering air that goes "Over the hills and far away." For real company and friendship, there is nothing outside of the animal kingdom that is comparable to a river. I will admit that a very good case can be made out in favor of some other objects of natural affection. For example, a fair apology has been offered by those ambitious persons who have fallen in love with the sea. But, after all, that is a formless and disquieting passion. It lacks solid comfort and mutual confidence. The sea is too big for loving, and too uncertain. It will not fit into our thoughts.
It has no personality because it has so many. It is a salt abstraction. You might as well think of loving a glittering generality like "the American woman." One would be more to the purpose. Van Dyke was a fine writer, and a man of careful thought; this book is as much a pleasure as it was when he wrote it generations ago.
Author Biography
Henry Jackson van Dyke Jr. (1852 - 1933) was an American author, educator and clergyman. He was born on November 10, 1852, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Henry Jackson van Dyke Sr. (1822-1891), a prominent Brooklyn Presbyterian clergyman known in the antebellum years for his anti-abolitionist views. The family traced its roots to Jan Thomasse van Dijk, who emigrated from Holland to the North America in 1652. One of van Dyke's best-known poems is titled "Time Is" (Music and Other Poems, 1904), also known as "For Katrina's Sundial" because it was composed to be an inscription on a sundial in the garden of an estate owned by his friends Spencer and Katrina Trask. The second section of the poem, which was read at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, reads as follows: "Time is Too slow for those who Wait, Too swift for those who Fear, Too long for those who Grieve, Too short for those who Rejoice, But for those who Love, Time is not."
