My themes will not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures.

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.

The greater number of men are merely corporals.

The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.

I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light.