and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The
story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a
meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to
eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar
wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not
suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the
children of the northern forests who were.

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in
which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock, spruce
or arbor vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating
and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots
eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw,
as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the
marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts,
including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft.
And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of
Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is
probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork to
make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization
can endure--as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.

There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood
thrush, to which I would migrate--wild lands where no settler has
squatted; to which, methinks, I am already acclimated.

The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland,
as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the
most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man
so much like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of