A SPRING RELISH 



streams of summer, because the rocks and 

 pebbles that cause the sound in summer are 

 deeply buried beneath the current. " Still 

 waters run deep " is not so true as " deep 

 waters run still." I rode for half a day 

 along the upper Delaware, and my thoughts 

 almost unconsciously faced toward the full, 

 clear river. Both the Delaware and the 

 Susquehanna have a starved, impoverished 

 look in summer, unsightly stretches of 

 naked drift and bare, bleaching rocks. But 

 behold them in March, after the frost has 

 turned over to them the moisture it has held 

 back and stored up as the primitive forests 

 used to hold the summer rains. Then they 

 have an easy, ample, triumphant look, that 

 is a feast to the eye. A plump, well-fed 

 stream is as satisfying to behold as a well- 

 fed animal or a thrifty tree. One source of 

 charm in the English landscape is the full, 

 placid stream the season through ; no desic- 

 cated watercourses will you see there, nor 

 any feeble, decrepit brooks, hardly able to 

 get over the ground. 



This condition of our streams and rivers 

 in spring is evidently but a faint reminis- 

 cence of their condition during what we 

 may call the geological springtime, the 

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