No More Learning

See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper's history!
From this stump we may guess the sharpness of his axe, and from the
slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, and whether he cut down
the tree without going round it or changing hands; and, from the
flexure of the splinters, we may know which way it fell. This one chip
contains inscribed on it the whole history of the woodchopper and of
the world. On this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt,
perchance, or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the
forest, with what interest we read the tattle of cities, of those
larger huts, empty and to let, like this, in High Streets and
Broadways. The eaves are dripping on the south side of this simple
roof, while the titmouse lisps in the pine and the genial warmth of
the sun around the door is somewhat kind and human.

After two seasons, this rude dwelling does not deform the scene.
Already the birds resort to it, to build their nests, and you may
track to its door the feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a long time,
nature overlooks the encroachment and profanity of man. The wood still
cheerfully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that fells
it, and while they are few and seldom, they enhance its wildness, and
all the elements strive to naturalize the sound.

Now our path begins to ascend gradually to the top of this high hill,
from whose precipitous south side we can look over the broad country
of forest and field and river, to the distant snowy mountains. See
yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some
invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead.
There must be a warmer and more genial spot there below, as where we
detect the vapor from a spring forming a cloud above the trees. What
fine relations are established between the traveler who discovers this
airy column from some eminence in the forest and him who sits below!
Up goes the smoke as silently and naturally as the vapor exhales from
the leaves, and as busy disposing itself in wreaths as the housewife
on the hearth below. It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests
more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot.
Where
its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human
life has planted itself,--and such is the beginning of Rome, the
establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on
the prairies of America or the steppes of Asia.

And now we descend again, to the brink of this woodland lake, which
lies in a hollow of the hills, as if it were their expressed juice,
and that of 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 traveler
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 shore, a dry beech leaf, rocking still, as if it
would start again. A skillful engineer, methinks, might project its
course since it fell from the parent stem. Here are all the elements
for such a calculation.