But there is one important point where the illustration of the road in rain quite fails. It is only when rain is falling, or immediately after a heavy shower, that the rills are seen upon the road. When the rain ceases the water begins to dry up, till in a short time the road becomes once more firm and dusty. But the brooks and rivers do not cease to flow when the rain ceases to fall. In the heat of summer, when perhaps there has been no rain for many days together, the rivers still roll on, smaller usually than they were in winter, but still with ample flow. What keeps them full? If you remember what you have already been told about underground water, you will answer that rivers are fed by springs as well as by rain. Though the weather may be rainless, the springs continue to give out their supplies of water, and these keep the rivers going. But if great drought comes, many of the springs, particularly the shallow ones, cease to flow, and the rivers fed by them shrink up or get dry altogether. The great rivers of the globe, such as the Mississippi, drain such vast territories, that any mere local rain or drought makes no sensible difference in their mass of water. In some parts of the world, however, the rivers are larger in summer and autumn than they are in winter and spring. The Rhine, for instance, begins to rise as the heat of summer increases, and to fall as the cold of winter comes on. This happens because the river has its source among snowy mountains. Snow melts rapidly in summer, and the water which streams from it finds its way into the brooks and rivers, which are thereby greatly swollen. In winter, on the other hand, the snow remains unmelted; the moisture which falls from the air upon the mountains is chiefly snow; and the cold is such as to freeze the brooks. Hence the supplies of water at the sources of these rivers are, in winter, greatly diminished, and the rivers themselves become proportionately smaller. [To be continued.] SUNDAY READINGS. Selected by REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D. [_Sunday, November 4._] MORAL DISTINCTIONS NOT SUFFICIENTLY REGARDED IN SOCIAL INTERCOURSE. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”—_Proverbs xiii:20._ That “a man may be known by the company he keeps,” has passed into a proverb among all nations, thus attesting what has been the universal experience. The fact would seem to be that a man’s associates either find him, or make him like themselves. An acute but severe critic of manners, who was too often led by his disposition and circumstances to sink the philosopher in the satirist, has said: “Nothing is so contagious as example. Never was there any considerable good or ill action, that hath not produced its like. We imitate good ones through emulation; and bad ones through that malignity in our nature, which shame conceals, and example sets at liberty.”