certain plants with special regard, and, over all, the pond-lily,--then,
the gentian, and the _Mikania scandens_, and "life-everlasting," and a
bass-tree which he visited every year when it bloomed, in the middle of
July. He thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than the
sight,--more oracular and trustworthy. The scent, of course, reveals
what is concealed from the other senses. By it he detected earthiness.
He delighted in echoes, and said they were almost the only kind of kindred
voices that he heard. He loved Nature so well, was so happy in her
solitude, that he became very jealous of cities, and the sad work which
their refinements and artifices made with man and his dwelling. The axe
was always destroying his forest. "Thank God," he said, "they cannot cut
down the clouds!" "All kinds of figures are drawn on the blue ground with
this fibrous white paint."

I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpublished manuscripts, not only
as records of his thought and feeling, but for their power of description
and literary excellence.

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in
the milk."

"The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled brown paper salted."

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or,
perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged
man concludes to built a wood-shed with them."

"The locust z-ing."

"Devil's-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow brook."