The Red Rose grew by the side of a tiny little brook, which had nothing to do the livelong day but to dance over its pebbles, and sing pretty songs, and laugh in the sunshine. The Red Rose was very discontented with her lot, for there was no one around with whom she could associate, but white and red clovers, dandelions and butter-cups. The Brook, who was a garrulous little fellow, made her still more discontented, by telling her what fine things there were out in the world, and how she would enjoy them if she would go with him and see them. One day, tired of looking into the Brook and seeing only herself, she dropped into his arms, and he tenderly carried her along. She floated very lazily and pleasantly along for a time, for the heavens were all blue, and the sunshine was bright, and the Brook was smooth, and so they rode along merrily together. The wild laurels, and red Betties, and Jack-in-the-pulpit, and starry asters, crowded together on the marges of the Brook to see her pass, and nodded to her. The white lilies who grew in the Brook rippled the water with their mocking laughter, for they knew her fate. The sober ferns warned her, but she paid no heed to the warning, and sailed down the meadow as proudly as Cleopatra under her silken sails on the turbid Nile. By and bye she got out of the meadow and it was not so pleasant. The flowers disappeared, and she had hard work to avoid the flags and rushes, and old gnarled stumps, and the sun was hidden by the interlaced tree-tops, and there were all sorts of water-spiders and little glossy black bugs which she disliked. After a time, the frogs and the water-snakes terrified her, and one day she found herself in a little whirlpool which made her dizzy. When she recovered, she was in the foam of a water-fall, and the foam-bells dazzled her so with their sheen that she plunged about among the rocks very wildly and before she emerged from them, some of her petals were badly damaged. It was now too late to return. She had made the first fall and she must go on. She no longer recognized the little Brook in the brawling, muddy waters which carried her through the rank swamps, where she met all kinds of noxious, ill-favored flowers, the hemlock, and nightshade, and belladonna, and poisonous ivies, which mocked her. The Brook was now a river, and too wide for her to escape. On she must go, ever on, bruised and weary as she was, and presently the river swept her through a great city, rank with corruption and filth; swept her past the vessels at the wharves, loading and unloading, and noisy with the curses and cries of the sailors; under the wheels of steamboats; now sunk into the corrupt depths, and now rising to the surface again, but so changed that none of the flowers in the country, who nodded to her that bright morning, would ever have known her; under the arches of the bridges and close by slimy mouldering piers; and one evening, so close to the dead