Madam How is digging away with her soft spade, water.

She has a harder spade, or rather plough, the strongest and most terrible of all ploughs; but that, I am glad to say, she has laid by in England here.
Water?
But water is too simple a thing to have dug out all this great glen.
My dear child, the most wonderful part of Madam How's work is, that she does such great things and so many different things, with one and the same tool, which looks to you so simple, though it really is not so.
Water, for instance, is not a simple thing, but most complicated; and we might spend hours in talking about water, without having come to the end of its wonders.

Still Madam How is a great economist, and never wastes her materials.

She is like the sailor who boasted (only she never boasts) that, if he had but a long life and a strong knife, he would build St.Paul's Cathedral before he was done.

And Madam How has a very long life, and plenty of time; and one of the strongest of all her tools is water.