PEPACTON 



and affords an abundance of shade. The water does 

 not bubble up, but comes straight out with great 

 speed, like a courier with important news, and as 

 if its course underground had been a direct and 

 an easy one for a long distance. Springs that issue 

 in this way have a sort of vertebra, a ridgy and 

 spine-like centre that suggests the gripe and push 

 there is in this element. 



What would one not give for such a spring in 

 his back yard, or front yard, or anywhere near his 

 house, or in any of his fields ? One would be 

 tempted to move his house to it, if the spring could 

 not be brought to the house. Its mere poetic value 

 and suggestion would be worth all the art and or- 

 nament to be had. It would irrigate one's heart 

 and character as well as his acres. Then one might 

 have a Naiad Queen to do his churning and to 

 saw his wood ; then one might " see his chore done 

 by the gods themselves," as Emerson says, or by 

 the nymphs, which is just as well. 



I know a homestead, situated on one of the pic- 

 turesque branch valleys of the Housatonic, that has 

 such a spring flowing by the foundation walls of 

 the house, and not a little of the strong overmas- 

 tering local attachment that holds the owner therfe 

 is born of that, his native spring. He could not, 

 if he would, break from it. He says that when he 

 looks down into it he has a feeling that he is an 

 amphibious animal that has somehow got stranded. 

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