No More Learning

The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as
well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most
delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much
like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of nature, that his
very person should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence,
and remind us of those parts of nature which he most haunts. I feel
no disposition to be satirical, when the trapper's coat emits the odor
of musquash even; it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly
exhales from the merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into
their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy
plains and flowery meads which they have frequented, but of dusty
merchants' exchanges and libraries rather.

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is
a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The
pale white man! " I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin
the naturalist says, "A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian
was like a plant bleached by the gardener's art, compared with a fine,
dark green one, growing vigorously in the open fields. "

Ben Jonson exclaims,--

"How near to good is what is fair! "

So I would say,--

How near to good is what is _wild_!

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet
subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward
incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made
infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country
or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be
climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not
in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When,
formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had
contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted
solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog,--a
natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me.
I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my
native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are
no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda
(_Cassandra calyculata_) which cover these tender places on the
earth's surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of
the shrubs which grow there,--the high blueberry, panicled andromeda,
lambkill, azalea, and rhodora,--all standing in the quaking sphagnum.
I often think that I should like to have my house front on this mass
of dull red bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders,
transplanted spruce and trim box, even graveled walks,--to have this
fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrowfuls of soil
only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why
not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that
meagre assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and
Art, which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make
a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though
done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most
tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to
me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn tops, or what not, soon
wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the
swamp, then (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar), so
that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front yards are not
made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back
way.

Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to
dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human
art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide
for the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens,
for me!

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness.
Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!