The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.

Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.

I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government

For in the wood these golden days Some leaf obeys its Maker's call. And through their hollow aisles it plays With delicate touch the prelude of the Fall.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.