When water is heated and turned into steam, it moves powerful engines. These engines propel our great steamships and steamboats and drive machines of all kinds in mills and factories.

Many of you have seen water, clear and cool, trickling from the rocks in the side of a hill. This water first forms a spring.

From this spring, the water escapes in a tiny stream, called a rivulet or creek, and flows along until it enters a river. Many springs make many rivulets; many rivulets make large rivers.

Rivers sometimes receive such great quantities of water that they overflow their banks, and destroy much valuable property. This is called a freshet or a flood.

Many people who live near some of our rivers have lost their houses, furniture, and cattle, which were all swept away by these floods.

In the winter of 1883, the Ohio River received so much water from the thousands of rivulets flowing into it, that it overflowed its banks.

The result of this overflow was one of the greatest floods ever known, and many, no

doubt, who read this, were there to see its terrible effects.

But where does all this water come from? you may ask.

Let me see if I can explain it to you. The water in all these rivers, lakes, and oceans is constantly rising into the air in what is called moisture or vapor. We can not see this moisture, neither can we see the air.

If the air is cold, moisture does not rise rapidly; but, as the air becomes heated, it takes up more moisture, so that the more heat there is in the air, the more moisture rises.

Heated air is light, and rises higher and higher from the ground, taking the moisture with it, until it reaches a point where it begins to cool.

Then as the air cools, the moisture forms into clouds, and these clouds are, in a certain sense, floating water.

Floating water! How can water float! do you ask?

Well, I will tell you. Cold air is heavier than heated air, and until the clouds become so full of moisture as to return some

of it to the earth in the shape of rain, they float because they are lighter than the air underneath them.

The winds, by the flapping of their mighty wings, drive the clouds over the land to the hills and the mountains and the thirsty fields; and there they pour their blessings on the farms, pastures, orchards and the dusty roads and wayside grass, bringing greenness and gladness everywhere.

Without water nothing would grow; everything would dry up and wither.

All animals drink water, for it forms a part of their blood and thus helps to keep them alive. All trees and plants drink it by drawing it through their roots or leaves, for it helps to form their sap.

Sometimes on a summer morning you will see drops of clear sparkling water on flowers and grass.

To look at them you would think it had rained during the night; but, noticing that the ground is dry, you know that no rain has fallen.

What then are these glittering drops of water? Where do they come from?

I will tell you. These drops are called dew. As night comes on, the grass and the leaves of flowers and plants become cool.

When the warm air touches them, it becomes chilled, and as the air can not then carry so much moisture as before, it leaves some of its moisture on the flowers and grass.

A moisture like dew sometimes collects in the house. Did you ever observe it in drops on the outside of a pitcher of cold water? Some people suppose that the water comes through the pitcher, but it does not.

The water being cold makes the pitcher cold, and as the warm air of the room strikes it, a moisture like dew is left on the pitcher, in the same manner as dew is left on grass, leaves, and flowers.

In cold weather, when the dew gathers on plants and flowers, it sometimes freezes and forms frost, and when the clouds throw off their moisture in raindrops, the rain becomes sleet, hail, or snow.

So you see that dew, rain, frost, sleet, snow, and hail are only different forms of water.

On a pleasant street in the old town of Fairfield, stands a neat, little cottage. This was formerly the home of Mrs. Reed, an old lady respected by her neighbors and loved by all the young people of the place.

There was about Mrs. Reed a kindly manner which pleased all who knew her. Although very poor, she took much interest in her young friends and tried to make them happy.

Mrs. Reed had not always been poor. Her husband when alive was supposed to be rich; but after his death, it was found that nothing was left to his widow but two small cottages.

In one of these cottages, Mrs. Reed lived;