I was standing by a beautiful bubbling spring, at the foot of a little hill near my mother's cottage.

The welling spring, the rock over which it gushed, the trees which bent their branches over the fountain to guard it from the sunbeams, the sweet music the falling waters,--all these were romantic and picturesque.

I might imagine myself "a nymph, a naiad, or a grace." Or, had I carried a pitcher in my hand, I might have thought myself another Rebecca, and poised on my shoulder the not ungraceful burden.

But I was dipping water from the spring, in a tin pail, of a broad, clumsy, unclassic form,--too heavy for the shoulder, and extremely difficult to carry in the hand, in consequence of the small, wiry handle.

In my confusion I dropped the pail, which went gaily floating to the opposite side of the spring, entirely out of my reach.