nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our
senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature
which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical, when
the trapper's coat emits the odor of musquash even; it is a
sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the
merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into their
wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy
plains and flowery meads which they have frequented, but of dusty
merchants' exchanges and libraries rather.

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps
olive is a fitter color than white for a man--a denizen of the
woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African
pitied him. Darwin the naturalist says, "A white man bathing by
the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached by the
gardener's art, compared with a fine, dark green one, growing
vigorously in the open fields."

Ben Jonson exclaims,--

"How near to good is what is fair!"

So I would say,--

"How near to good is what is WILD!"

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not
yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed
forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew
fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself