Now the noisy winds are still;
April's coming up the hill!
All the spring is in her train,
Led by shining ranks of rain.
—Mary Mapes Dodge.
THE APRIL RAINS AND THE WORK OF THE RIVERS
I always liked the little boy's definition of a river system. "Rivers that empty into other rivers that empty into other rivers that empty into the sea."
What is still more interesting, the sea at the same time is emptying into the rivers; for the waters of all the lands and the waters of all the seas, are one, and what the rivers give to the sea the sea returns in the rain clouds that are blown landward by the winds. The Earth's waters are thus always in circulation like the blood in our bodies. In making this endless circuit they do an immense amount of useful and beautiful work, and have many strange and curious ways of doing it. It's a great family affair of the Waters people. Everybody has a hand in it, from the baby rill that toddles across the country road, the brook it meets in the meadow, the creek that runs through the wood, and the river into which it flows, to the greater river which carries forward these mingled waters to the sea.
THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER SYSTEM