the leaves, which are annually steeped in it. Without outlet or inlet to
the eye, it has still its history, in the lapse of its waves, in the
rounded pebbles on its shore, and in the pines which grow down to its
brink. It has not been idle, though sedentary, but, like Abu Musa, teaches
that "sitting still at home is the heavenly way; the going out is the way
of the world." Yet in its evaporation it travels as far as any. In summer
it is the earth's liquid eye; a mirror in the breast of nature. The sins
of the wood are washed out in it. See how the woods form an amphitheatre
about it, and it is an arena for all the genialness of nature. All trees
direct the traveller to its brink, all paths seek it out, birds fly to it,
quadrupeds flee to it, and the very ground inclines toward it. It is
nature's saloon, where she has sat down to her toilet. Consider her silent
economy and tidiness; how the sun comes with his evaporation to sweep the
dust from its surface each morning, and a fresh surface is constantly
welling up; and annually, after whatever impurities have accumulated
herein, its liquid transparency appears again in the spring. In summer a
hushed music seems to sweep across its surface. But now a plain sheet of
snow conceals it from our eyes, except where the wind has swept the ice
bare, and the sere leaves are gliding from side to side, tacking and
veering on their tiny voyages. Here is one just keeled up against a pebble
on shove, a dry beech-leaf, rocking still, as if it would start again. A
skilful engineer, methinks, might project its course since it fell from
the parent stem. Here are all the elements for such a calculation. Its
present position, the direction of the wind, the level of the pond, and
how much more is given. In its scarred edges and veins is its log rolled
up.

We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger house. The surface of the
pond is our deal table or sanded floor, and the woods rise abruptly from
its edge, like the walls of a cottage. The lines set to catch pickerel