think I should move out of Concord.



We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer
pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for
them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each
growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid
waste--sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to
mill--and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on.
They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial
season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of
the mind, cast by the WINGS of some thought in its vernal or
autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the
substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned
to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a
Shanghai and Cochin- China grandeur. Those GRA-A-ATE THOUGHTS,
those GRA-A-ATE men you hear of!

We hug the earth--how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate
ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found
my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on
the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid
for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had
never seen before--so much more of the earth and the heavens. I
might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years
and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But,
above all, I discovered around me--it was near the end of
June--on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and
delicate red conelike blossoms, the fertile flower of the white