In going along the course of a
brook or a river, you sometimes come upon a bend, where you find a heap
of smooth and nicely rounded pebble stones thrown up. Did you ever ask
yourselves how these pebbles came to be so round and smooth? When broken
off from their respective rocks, they were as irregular in form, they
had as sharp corners, and as rough, and ragged, and jagged edges, and
were altogether as ugly and unsightly things as any fragments of rocks
you ever looked upon. But they got into the water, and the stream rolled
them along, and rubbed them gently one against another, and this was the
way they came to be so round and smooth. There is no doubt, that if the
stones could have talked, and if they had had no more sense than we
have, whenever they found that their neighbor stones were rubbing them,
they would have screamed out, "Oh! how you scratch;" never dreaming that
they were scratching the other stones just as much at the same time. But
fortunately the stones could not talk; and though they had not so much
sense as we have, they had less nonsense, and that served them as
well--so they took their rubbing quietly; and hence the smoothness of
their surface, and the beauty of their shape. Now here we are, living
stones in the great stream of time, tumbled about and rubbed one against
another.
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