pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the
topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the
streets--for it was court week--and to farmers and lumber-dealers
and woodchoppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like
before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of
ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns
as perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has
from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only
toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved by them. We
see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The
pines have developed their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs
of the wood every summer for ages, as well over the heads of
Nature's red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a farmer
or hunter in the land has ever seen them.



Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is
blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life
in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock
crow in every barnyard within our horizon, it is belated. That
sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique
in our employments and habits of thoughts. His philosophy comes
down to a more recent time than ours. There is something
suggested by it that is a newer testament,--the gospel according
to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and
kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season, in the
foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and
soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,--healthiness as of
a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate