TOben (Brass is <5teen 



outing, but kept on my way, ready for new adven- 

 tures or a repetition of some old experience. I was 

 not disappointed. Crossing a field that was well 

 sprinkled with bits of Indian pottery, and so in old 

 times an Indian village site, I came to a pretty 

 brook, well lined with tall trees on each bank. 



A babbling brook 

 In a shady nook, 

 With charm none may resist, 

 Where the prying sun, 

 Ere his course was run, 

 The rippling waters kissed. 



I looked for little fishes, silvery minnows or 

 speckled darters, but found none. From under 

 one flat stone there darted something that might 

 have been a baby red-fin. I was disappointed, and 

 then recalled how foolish was such a feeling. As 

 if there were no other creatures but fishes in and 

 about a brook. 



I once made, or undertook to make, an anno- 

 tated catalogue of a meadow ditch, but gave up in 

 despair. I never saw a brook, whether a moun- 

 tain stream or a lowland water course, that was 

 not a museum. There are turtles, snakes, frogs, 

 and generally the miscalled water lizards, that is, 

 salamanders. Perhaps no one of these forms is 

 quite as attractive as a lively fish ; but it is a great 

 mistake to withhold attention because our first im- 

 pressions are not favorable. Seeing the creature, 

 stop always to determine what it is about, whether 

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