Morning journal and courier., 1880-09-15
A Bather's Ideal.
From Frazer's Magazine. l


 The sea-brine is clammy to the skin, the plain-fed river is seldom absolutely pure, even the impid lake We sometimes feel too stagnant for the full renewal of our force Better than all these is clear deep mountain stream-not turbid glacier torrent, though these can be grateful indeed to a tired climb CT, but @ stream such as Scotland and the English lake country and Wales give lavishly, pellucid as the very air, or, if tinged at all, then with clear amber that breaks in the sunlight with a radiance of liquid gold To know the full glory and mystery of his de- light let the bather follow upward such stream through a summer afternoon from where 1t flows in obvious comeliness and charity on the plain, making some broad meadow fresh and green, and lending itself to the thirsty fock-upward toward its era dle on the moor. As he climbs the hill by it's side, it's voice begins to call to him, but it hides itself shy1y from his sight Rock and wood overshadow and sometimes almost bury it, 1t takes sudden terms, 1t spreads in a film of spray over wide steep ledge, or splits it. self between tiny islands, or gurgles low among mosses and bracken, and maidenhair and parsley-fern. Often does some deep pool tempt the seeker to stay and be content; but he presses onward and upward, still searching for the absolute good. At last he finds his reward. AS he turns 8 corner he hears the noise of waterfall he looks up and sees, some 30 yards before him, the wa ter pouring over ledge twice or three times his own stature in height. Between him and that falling foam lies his paradise Amid steep walls of grey rock runs the emerald wa ter It runs swiftly one side with the
 tbeaded bubbles" springing joyously to the surface, children of the air that are bathers themselves, and plunge by hundreds into the rapturous foam on the other side it ed- dies gently round in dimpled coils, stealing back once more to the delicious hurrying flow. The red berries of the mountain ash droop toward the stream and are reflected there, and red-leaved oak bushes such as hung about the Bandusian spring are ming led with the silvery glimmer of the birch the lady of trees. Grasses and ferns shoot in tufts from the crevices of the rock and the floating spray Is faintly scented with their fragrance. But the bather's first mood is too eager to note in detail all the charms that make up the perfection of the place that he feels intoxlcate him. He chooses some broad ledge, low or high as he will above the water, and throws aside the clothes that have incum- bered him in his hot upward journey. As he stands up free his bare feet on the smooth warm stone, he feels such half -scornful pity for his clothed fellow men whom he has left behind, as the naked Greek in the palastra felt for the barbarian of the East to whose grossness such simplicity seemed a shame One moment he gazes into the clear depths; through 15 feet of water he could count every stone of the gravel that lies undisturbed be- lo" cAo eE'ttIhAIlS DuDDleS seem GO SnOOJ up laughingly to greet him then his hands rise and clasp each other above his head, he stoops, he takes the plunge, his clinched hands, his head, his body, his strengthened knees meet and cleave the embracing water; then, after one moment of intense, almost unconscious joy, he rises amid millions of new born bubbles and strikes out blithely against the torrent, breasting the foam close under the beating fall. Let him come again after long rains have swollen the streams, and he shall find still more intoxicating rapture, when the current is beyond his strength to stem, and he can only hurl himself into the foam below the fall, to be swept down the whole length of the deep water in glad aban- donment, until he can catch some rising rounded boulder, and check his rush before he be dashed among the stony shallows But this is day for more various pleasures; the stream, with all it's vitality, is not too impet- uous to daily with him by the way; it seems to have wished for him, as he for it for his fancy tells him that in his person for this happy hour man is reconciled and made one with nature.