SPRINGS. 55 



and ever-washed ladder. Where are the berries? 

 where is the butter, the milk, the steak, the melon ? 

 In the spring. It preserves, it ventilates, it cleanses. 

 It is a board of health and general purveyor. It is 

 equally for use and for pleasure. Nothing degrades 

 it, and nothing can enhance its beauty. It is picture 

 and parable, and an instrument of music. It is serv- 

 ant and divinity in one. The milk of forty cows is 

 cooled in it, and never a drop gets into the cans, 

 though they are plunged to the brim. It is as in- 

 sensible to drought and rain as to heat and cold. It 

 is planted upon the sand and yet it abideth like a 

 house upon a rock. It evidently has some relation to 

 a little brook that flows down through a deep notch 

 in the hills half a mile distant, because on one occa- 

 sion, when the brook was being ditched or dammed, 

 the spring showed great perturbation. Every nymph 

 in it was filled with sudden alarm and kicked up a 

 commotion. 



In some sections of the country, when there is no 

 spring near the house, the farmer, with much labor 

 and pains, brings one from some up-lying field or 

 wood. Pine and poplar logs are bored and laid in a 

 trench, and the spring practically moved to the de- 

 aired spot. The ancient Persians had a law, that 

 whoever thus conveyed the water of a spring to a spot 

 not watered before should enjoy many immunities 

 under the state not granted to others. 



Hilly and mountainous countries do not always 

 tbound in good springs. When the stratum is verti- 



