Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next place when it is really eight or ten!

Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.

It doesn't seem to be that huge a commitment that would create, you know, some kind of really powerful constituency. But the history has been for the United States and Russia especially that nuclear weapons have kind of become part of the identity of the countries.

Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently, as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols.

Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.

Look up at the miracle of the falling snow,—the air a dizzy maze of whirling, eddying flakes, noiselessly transforming the world, the exquisite crystals dropping in ditch and gutter, and disguising in the same suit of spotless livery all objects upon which they fall.

When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast.