Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I live. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mild a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river