For, moreover, David had set his feet a brief space on the wide
plains of living-knowledge; he had encountered through their works
many of the great minds of his century, been reached by the sublime
thought-movements of his time, heard the deep roar of the spirit's
ocean. Amid coarse, daily labor once more, amid the penury and
discord in that ruined farmhouse, one true secret of happiness with
David was the recollection of all the noble things of human life
which he had discovered, and to which he meant to work his way
again as soon as possible. And what so helps one to believe in God
as knowledge of the greatness of man?

Meantime, also, his mind was kept freshly and powerfully exercised.
He had discarded his old way of looking at Nature and man's place
in it; and of this fundamental change in him, no better proof could
be given than the way in which he regarded the storm, as he left
the breakfast-table this morning and went to the woods.

The damage was unreckonable. The trees had not been prepared
against an event like that. For centuries some of them had
developed strength in root and trunk and branch to resist the winds
of the region when clad in all their leaves; or to carry the load
of these leaves weighted with raindrops; or to bear the winter
snows. Wise self-physicians of the forest! Removing a weak or
useless limb, healing their own wounds and fractures! But to be
buried under ice and then wrenched and twisted by the blast--for
this they had received no training: and thus, like so many of the
great prudent ones who look hourly to their well-being, they had
been stricken down at last by the unexpected.