the side toward the clearing. The water from this
spring flowed down along a little mossy dell, until it reached the
brook. The bed over which this little rivulet flowed was stony, and
yet no stones were to be seen. They all had the appearance of rounded
tufts of soft green moss, so completely were they all covered and
hidden by the beautiful verdure.

Albert was very much pleased when he discovered this spring, and
traced its little mossy rivulet down to the brook. He thought that
Mary Erskine would like it. So he avoided cutting down any of the
trees from the dell, or from around the spring, and in cutting down
those which grew near it, he took care to make them fall away from
the dell, so that in burning they should not injure the trees which he
wished to save. Thus that part of the wood which shaded and sheltered
the spring and the dell, escaped the fire.

The house was placed in such a position that this spring was directly
behind it, and Albert made a smooth and pretty path leading down to
it; or rather he made the path smooth, and nature made it pretty. For
no sooner had he completed his work upon it than nature began to adorn
it by a profusion of the richest and greenest grass and flowers,
which she caused to spring up on either side. It was so in fact in all
Albert's operations upon his farm. Almost every thing that he did was
for some purpose of convenience and utility, and he himself undertook
nothing more than was necessary to secure the useful end. But his kind
and playful co-operator, nature, would always take up the work
where he left it, and begin at once to beautify it with her rich and
luxuriant verdure. For example, as soon as the fires went out over the
clearing, she began, with her sun and rain, to blanch the blackened
stumps, and to gnaw at their foundations with her tooth of decay. If
Albert made a road or a path she rounded its angles, softened away all
the roughness that his plow or hoe had left in it, and fringed it with
grass and flowers. The solitary and slender trees which had been left
standing here and there around the clearing, having escaped the fire,
she took under her special care--throwing out new and thrifty branches
from them, in every direction, and thus giving them massive and
luxuriant forms, to beautify the landscape, and to form shady retreats
for the flocks and herds which might in subsequent years graze upon
the ground. Thus while Albert devoted himself to the substantial a