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left everywhere and altogether illegible. No
Vandals, however vandalic in their disposition,
can be so industrious as to destroy them.

They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil
thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind
that shaped them. I would fain know that I
am treading in the tracks of human game, that
I am on the trail of mind.
When I see

these signs I know that the subtle spirits that
made them are not far off, into whatever form
transmuted. What if you do plough and hoe
amid them, and swear that not one stone shall
be left upon another, they are only the less
likely to break in that case. When you turn
up one layer you bury another so much the
more securely. They are at peace with rust.
This arrowheaded character promises to out-
last all others. The larger pestles and axes
may perchance be broken and grow scarce, but
the arrowhead shall perhaps never cease to wing
its way through the ages to eternity. .
When some Vandal chieftain has razed to earth
the British Museum, and perchance the winged
bulls of Nineveh shall have lost most, if not all,
of their features, the arrowheads which the
museum contains may find themselves at home
again in familiar dust, and resume their shining
in new springs upon the bared surface of the
earth, to be picked up for the thousandth time

by the shepherd or savage that may be wandering there, and once more suggest their story to him. They cannot be said to be lost or found. Surely their use was not so much to bear its fate to some bird or quadruped, or man, as it was to lie here near the surface of the earth for a perpetual reminder to the generations that come after. As for museums,

I think it is better to let nature take care of our antiquities. These are our antiquities, and they are cleaner to think of than the rubbish of the Tower of London, and they are a more ancient armor than is there. It is a recommendation that they are so inobvious that they occur only to the eye and thought that chances to be directed toward them.

When you pick up an arrowhead and put it in your pocket, it may say, "Eh, you think you have got me, do you? But I shall wear a hole in your pocket at last, or if you put me in your cabinet, your heir or great-grandson will forget me, or throw me out of the window directly, or when the house falls I shall drop into the cellar, and then I shall be quite at home again, ready to be found again. Perhaps some new red man, that is to come, will fit me to a shaft and make me do his bidding for a bow shot; what reck I?"

The meadows, which are still covered far

and wide, are quite alive with black ducks. When walking about on the low eastern shore at the Bedford bound, I heard a faint honk, and looked around near the water with my glass, thinking it came from that side or perhaps from a farm-yard in that direction. I soon heard it again, and at last we detected a great flock of geese passing over quite on the other side of us and pretty high up. From time to time one of the company uttered a short note, --that peculiarly metallic, clangorous sound. They were in a single undulating line, and, as usual, one or two were from time to time crowded out of the line, apparently by the crowding of those in the rear, and were flying on one side and trying to recover their places. But at last a second short line was formed, meeting the long one at the usual angle, and making a figure somewhat like a hay-hook. I suspect it will be found there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air, that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides. The great gulls fly generally up and down the river valley, cutting off the bends of the river, and so do these geese. They fly sympathizing with

the river, a stream in the air, soon lost in the distant sky. If you scan the horizon at this season you are very likely to detect a flock of dark ducks moving with rapid wing athwart the sky, or see the undulating line of migrating geese.

Ball's Hill, with its withered oak leaves and its pines, looks very fair to-day, a mile and a half off across the water, through a very thin varnish or haze. It reminds me of the isle which was called up from the bottom of the sea and given to Apollo. How charming the contrast of land and water, especially where there is a temporary island in the flood with its new and tender shores of waving outline, so withdrawn, yet habitable; above all, if it rises into a hill high above the water, so contrasting with it the more, and, if that hill is wooded, suggesting wildness. Our vernal lakes have a beauty to my mind which they would not possess if they were more permanent. Everything is in rapid flux here, suggesting that nature is alive to her extremities and superficies. To-day we sail swiftly on dark rolling waves, or paddle over a sea as smooth as a mirror, unable to touch the bottom where mowers work and hide their jugs in August, coasting the edge of maple swamps where alder tassels and white-maple flowers are kissing the tide that has risen to

meet them. But this particular phase of beauty is fleeting. Nature has so many shows for us, she cannot afford to give much time to this. In a few days, perchance, these lakes will all have run away to the sea. Such are the pictures which she paints. When we look at our masterpieces we see only dead paint and its vehicle, which suggests no liquid life rapidly flowing off from beneath. But in nature it is constant surprise and novelty. As we sweep

past the north end of Poplar Hill, its now dryish, pale brown, withered sward, clothing its rounded slope which was lately saturated with moisture, presents very agreeable hues. In this light, in fair weather, the patches of now dull greenish masses contrast just regularly enough with the pale brown grass. It is like some rich but modest-colored Kidderminster carpet, or rather the skin of a monster python tacked to the hillside and stuffed with earth.

The earth lies out now like a leopard drying her lichen and moss spotted skin in the sun, her sleek and variegated hide. I know that the few raw spots will heal over. Brown is the color for me, the color of our coats and our daily lives, the color of the poor man's loaf. The bright tints are pies and cakes, good only for October feasts, which would make us sick if eaten every day.

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