The fields and woods are a good deal like the books we read: the more we become familiar with printed page or forest path, the oftener we return to certain thoughts and trails that lead us back to scenes and associations enjoyed before. I like to mark passages in books I love, here and there, as I would blaze a tree to guide me to the haunt of a cool stream or a rare flower’s hiding-place. Whenever I turn to such passages, I find that time and season have expanded some new thought in my mind, even as they have developed the buds to full-grown flowers since my first journey through the wood. There is a beautiful cold spring under the hill near the swamps of Etchowog. I have known of it all my life, and were I to visit this region every day for months, I should invariably be drawn unconsciously to this fountain. It is here that I quench my thirst and rest after wading through the neighboring swamps. I have turned many stones here in the past, and lifted the dead leaves from the choking throat of the spring. I have gathered the sundew growing in the moss fringing the banks; and in the sweet solitude and peace I have dreamed many dreams, inextricably mingled with the music of the stream. [Illustration: =The Fountain of Arethusa, near the Bogs of Etchowog, Pownal, Vermont.= “If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!”—THOREAU.] To-day I sought this spring to rest. I bathed my face and combed my hair over Nature’s own mirror, after taking a generous draught from the sparkling water. It bubbles and gushes continuously from under the rocky hillside, bringing sand and delicate-hued pebbles to scatter in the bottom of its bowl the year round. I rested here a full hour, and rinsed the mud off my boots. From here it is but a short walk to Barber’s Mill at the foot of Pownal Pond. Alders, willows, shad-bushes and pink azaleas, small white birches, tamaracks, pines, and beautiful swamp or soft maples fill the broad expanse of marsh-land to the right; while the rocky, burnt-over, and blackened hillside rises up to the left. I was tempted into the deeper underbrush, but proceeded very slowly, as the treacherous bog was so spongy with sphagnum that I would often sink from twelve to fifteen inches into its soft, pink depths. But here I felt secure, since there were many fallen trees and growing saplings to which I could hold and cling, in case I stepped into a “dead hole.”