But let us hope that the musician is born who will yet come to the woods and take down all the bird songs. What a splendid baritone the horned owl has! Who has written the music of the orioles and thrushes? Who goes to these bird operas at four o'clock in the morning? There is room for one fresh, original music book, the whole of which can be written at a few sittings upon a log just where the forests are shaded off into copses and islands of verdure beyond.
It is something to have lived three weeks without a sight of the sheriff, the doctor or the undertaker. Something of a victory to have passed out from under the burden of intense anxiety into a condition of serene indifference as to how this boisterous old world was getting on. If so much as a fugitive letter had reached us, it would have been construed into a mild case of assault and battery. The business of rejuvenation commences with lying down on the ground at night with the head due north, that the polar current may strike the weary brain first and gently charge the whole mortal system. The days of renewal may end by circumventing a two-pound trout, or with a long range rifle shooting at a running deer. But as no pilgrim ever reached the gates of Paradise with a pack on his back, so it is reasonably certain that heaven never came down to one who carried his burden into the wilderness in vacation.
What a great repose there is in these mountains draped in purple and camping like giants hard by the sea! And yet what an infinite shifting of light and shadow there is on sea and shore! Is the artist yet to be born on this soil who will paint the mountains in the glory of an evening transfiguration; or who will catch the inspiration of these grand defiles, opening vistas, and landscapes ripened and subdued under the harvest sun? We will leave him our bill of fare, that he may take heart on finding that while fame follows translation, a good dinner may safely precede that event. And as for you, oh friend, with the sallow face and sunken eyes--you had better get to the woods and read it for very life.
It matters little how one betakes himself to the wilderness, so that he gets there in some fitting mood to enjoy its great hospitality. If a bruised and battered guest, so much the more need of the profound peace and restfulness of the woods. There is a fine contrast in the autumn tints of yellow stubble fields set with the unfading green of oaks, like emeralds in settings of gold. The mysteries of the uplifted mountains are veiled in with a dreamy haze, as if all harsh and jerky outlines were the unfinished places yet to be rounded into fullness and beauty before the day of unveiling comes. These mighty throes of nature may be in accordance with some law of adjustment working towards an eternal perfection of finish, of which we have not yet attained so much as a dim conception. If our playhouses are toppled over, so much the better for some of the shams which now and then need the wholesome revision of fires and earthquakes. You see that ambitious wooden palace down the valley. What does it symbolize more than pretence, weakness and barrenness of all æsthetic culture? Some day nature will feel the affront, and this blot in the foreground of a noble picture will be gone. Is it because this type of civilization is but for a day, that the habitations of men are built for a day also? Where do our architects get their inspiration, that they cut such fantastic capers in wood? It might be well to put a new padlock on the tomb of Cicero before any further imitations of the villa at Tusculum are perpetrated. The savage leaves behind some show of broken pottery, or at least, here and there, an arrowhead of flint. We do not build well enough to secure any respectable ruins. What other antiquities, besides debts, are we likely to bequeath to posterity?
