Prisoners who know what a flower or an insect has been to them in their solitary cell, invalids who have employed their vacant minds in studying the patterns of paper-hangings on the walls of their sick-chambers, can tell what the river was to the lonely, imaginative creature who used to sit looking into its depths, hour after hour, from the airy height of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest.
Of late a thought had mingled with her fancies which had given to the river the aspect of something more than a friend and a companion.

It appeared all at once as a Deliverer.

Did not its waters lead, after long wanderings, to the great highway of the world, and open to her the gates of those cities from which she could take her departure unchallenged towards the lands of the morning or of the sunset?
Often, after a freshet, she had seen a child's miniature boat floating down on its side past her window, and traced it in imagination back to some crystal brook flowing by the door of a cottage far up a blue mountain in the distance.
So she now began to follow down the stream the airy shallop that held her bright fancies.

These dreams of hers were colored by the rainbows of an enchanted fountain,--the books of adventure, the romances, the stories which fortune had placed in her hands,--the same over which the heart of the Pride of the County had throbbed in the last century, and on the pages of some of which the traces of her tears might still be seen.
The literature which was furnished for Myrtle's improvement was chiefly of a religious character, and, however interesting and valuable to those to whom it was adapted, had not been chosen with any wise regard to its fitness for her special conditions.

Of what use was it to offer books like the "Saint's Rest" to a child whose idea of happiness was in perpetual activity?
She read "Pilgrim's Progress," it is true, with great delight.