Presently his mind turned to money and personal wealth. He had never given it much thought, and only seriously considered money in terms of what it could accomplish. Now he was receiving a very large salary and had, as well, holdings in shares of the various companies. He dwelt on the fact for a while, not that he had ever aimed at riches, but because his financial position was infinitely better than ever before. It would be easy, he reflected, to sell out, retire and live at ease. He chuckled audibly at the picture, realizing that if he stopped work he would die of a strangulated spirit.
Presently as he listened it seemed that the rapids took on a new pitch. He had remarked before that, varying with the direction of the wind, their call was not always in one great thundering diapason but sometimes in a gigantic hubbub made up, as it were, of the confused blending of many notes. Now, he imagined, he could discern them all--querulous, angry, contented, pleading, defiant, threatening and triumphant, and he perceived in them but the echo of changing human moods. To-day he distinguished chiefly a voice that was dominant and imperative.
Still in profound contemplation he surveyed the rapids' gigantic sweep, the proud and tossing billows shot through with sunlight and vibrant with speed. He made out those smooth and glistening emerald cellars into which the flashing river pitched to rise again in tossing crests. He followed back through the icy depths of the great lake stretching westward to hidden swamps in that vast wilderness where these waters were born, and shouting rivers down which they poured through silent pools and over leaping cataracts to Superior. He saw still another river that, growing in power and majesty, moved royally past the cities of men, healing, sustaining and inspiring. And, last of all, he perceived these waters of half a continent blend silently with the brackish tides and lose themselves in the eternal sea.
This translation of vision moved him profoundly, for it was the nature of his remote personality to be stirred more deeply by the revelations of his own soul than by anything extraneous to its strange reactions. Then gradually the voice of the river resolved itself into one clear and unmistakable summons. "Use me while you may. I shall flow on forever, while you have but a moment in eternity."