From collection The Lyre Collection
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The Lyre of Alpha Chi Omega, Vol. 42, No. 2, January 1939
The Retort Perfect
ONCE in a while someone gives a perfect answer to the man who refuses
to draw on his imagination and who must weigh everything in his hands.
The following is such an answer. It was written by James E. Craig, Delta
Tau Delta, and editorial writer on the Sun, when he was on the staff of the
New York Telegram some years ago.
Symbolically, "The Real Suwanee
River" will serve as well to straighten out the all too practical materialists
in our fraternities as it has served to debunk the geographical literalists.
THE REAL SUWANEE RIVER
"Some bright young men of the United States Geographical Survey have
gone into Southern Georgia and Northern Florida to make certain investiga-
tions. They have found that a stream known locally as the Suwanee (or
Sewanee or Swanee) River is only an ordinary creek, affording some sort
of lazy outlet to the waters of the Okefinokee Swamp, and is as unimportant
and unlovely as swamp creeks usually are.
"That was all right, and part of their business. But when these young men
-or somebody for them-went so far as to report that the immortal river
of Stephen C. Foster's song is little better than a mere ditch they committed a
colossal error. It is a blunder to which very practical men and very literal
minds are particularly susceptible. They have confused the realm of geography
with that of imagination, and have fallen into the fallacy of trying to measure
with gauges and surveyor's chains something which is beyond logarithms and
laughs at the laws of trigonometry.
"The real Swanee River does not rise in any part of Georgia. It rises in
the highest mountains of the human soul, and is fed by the deepest springs
in the human heart. It does not flow through the swampy regions of Florida,
but through the pleasant, sunny lands of memory. It does not empty into a
material sea, but into the glorious ocean of unfulfilled dreams.
"It laves the shores of childhood. Its current ripples with the low, sweet
melody of recollections, softened and made misty by distance. There is such
mystical power in its waters that whoever finds himself wearied and worn
by the struggle of living has only to quaff and gain nepenthe.
"It is far, far away, but the heart is ever turning to it, because there's
where the old folks stay. On its banks may be only a hut among the bushes,
but the bees are still humming around it by day, and the banjo is still tumming
there in the starlight. And so they will continue to do while memories of
home and simple hopes and affections are the most prized possessions of
mankind.
"It was in a quaint jargon, such as probably was never actually spoken by
anybody, that Foster first sang about it. Nevertheless, his plaintive ditty has
become one of the great songs of all times. The surveyors who would find
the true Swanee River must hunt not among the Florida swamps but among
the majestic streams of infinite tenderness and love."
-From "One Man's Opinion" in
Banta's Greek Exchange
