this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws
are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last
he heard that note?

The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to
laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning
joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our
wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the
house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to
myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate,"--and with a
sudden gush return to my senses.



We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking
in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last,
just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear
stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning
sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in
the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the
hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east-
ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a
light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air
also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a
paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a
solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would
happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and
cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was
more glorious still.