THE ground was barren and wet, and covered with stagnant pools. Only rank weeds grew on it, and venomous reptiles crawled through it. But at length the husbandman came and labored over it. He dug trenches and ditches that drained it, and turned a stream of pure water to flow through it. Then he hedged it, and set up a fence around it; and now flocks pasture there, and flowers bloom on every side.

A GARDENER planted some seed in his garden in the early spring, but no sooner had it grown up than the frost nipped it. It sprang up a second time, and a bird flew down and plucked off the tender shoot. Once more it grew, but now, summer having come, the sun scorched it. Nevertheless, because the root remained, it sprang up again and again, until the gardener, rejoicing, gathered in his fruit.

A MOUNTAIN-STREAM ran over the edge of a precipice. In its descent to the valley below it fell upon a point of projecting rock. On this rock clods of earth were continually dropping from the ground it was imbedded in. Sometimes they fell of their own weight, sometimes were loosened by the foot of a wild beast in passing. There was never a day that the rock was not soiled by them. But the stream, in flowing over it, washed away each stain as soon as it appeared; so that to the eye looking from above, it seemed always pure and clean.