B? tbe Blitbe Brook- 171 



summer had kept it full, and its voice was clear and 

 jubilant as it hastened toward the silence of the lake. 

 A sharp clamber brought us to a little plateau where 

 the hilly stairway broadened into a sort of landing, 

 and the brook stayed its swift currents in a tiny mill- 

 pond by whose brown pool an aged mill bore wit- 

 ness to the ancient service of the stream ; and two 

 nestling cottages, homes of three generations of New 

 England farmers, suggested the long story which 

 might be told of the brook's alliance with human 

 interests, and the parallel stream of life which for a 

 century has run beside its own. 



It was on a hot morning, when we sought a cool 

 retreat, that we turned aside a little distance higher 

 up the stream, and by a diverging road crossed a 

 rude bridge ; and here the little gorge through which 

 the brook was running, with its large, grey boulders 

 and its arching trees, beguiled us from our purpose 

 of a longer stroll, and led us down the banks, close 

 to its mimic flood. Here we held communion with 

 the spirit of the brook. Here, too, we played the 

 simple game of ''tuning the brook," by damming 

 its waters where they rush through some narrow 

 crevice in the rocks, and drawing from the remon- 

 strating stream a new musical note. Still strolling 

 up-stream, over rocks and little ledges, we found 

 within a few rods of our first halting place another 

 shady nook which revealed a totally new aspect of 

 our stream. That is the charm of a brook. It means 

 variety, change, new vistas and new phases of nature 



