WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



CHAPTER I. 

 AT LINDEN BEND. 



In the long, low, level line of the eastern horizon 

 there is a jagged break, as though Nature's artist, when 

 making a sweeping outline, had caught his pencil-point. 

 Here, oozing from mossy recesses among the roots of 

 " a brotherhood of venerable trees," the waters afar off, 

 in that pleasant valley, seek the light through many 

 channels — now rippling over golden sands, now bub- 

 bling over snow-white pebbles, and at last uniting ,to 

 form a sparkling meadow-brook. 



Wooing the waters from a thousand springs, nearer 

 and nearer flows the growing stream, again and again 

 checked by a dam, but straightway leaving it behind, 

 as unruffled as in the ages when men were not; and 

 now as a goodly stream — one worthy of a name — it 

 reaches the last hinderance, and with unchecked flow 

 leisurely seeks the river. 



The hum of machinery, the splash of the water- 

 wheel, the roar of the tumbling waters, as in a solid, 

 silvery sheet they pour over the dam — all these prosaic 

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