A PEBBLE'S HISTORY. 181 



III. 



Aug. 16, '00. A deep pool at the base of an 

 old gnarled oak; minnows swimming gayly 

 through its depths; mosquitoes hawking above 

 it and testing my blood as soon as I seat myself 

 in the shade; wherrymen skating merrily o'er 

 the surface of the pool; leaves of many kinds, 

 brown and withered, last season's crop, decaying 

 beneath its depths such my first introduction to 

 the woodland stream this morn. I like at times 

 to be where no human soul knows where I am 

 alone and unnoticed in the universe of God. 



How bright and clean and pure the pebbles in 

 the bottom of many of the pools. They are drift 

 pebbles of quartz, chert, gneiss, syenite and 

 granite, torn from their mother ledge in the far 

 north and borne by icy steed to some resting 

 place near here. In time the stream wore its 

 way over and through the descending slope and 

 they, by agency of frost or water, of man or 

 burrowing mammal, found their way into its 

 bed. There they have been rolled along, buried 

 in its debris, uncovered and re-covered for per- 

 haps ten thousand years. To-day they look up 



