No More Learning

This subterranean fire has its altar in each man's breast; for in the
coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveler cherishes a warmer
fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A
healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter,
summer is in his heart. There is the south. Thither have all birds and
insects migrated, and around the warm springs in his breast are
gathered the robin and the lark.

At length, having reached the edge of the woods, and shut out the
gadding town, we enter within their covert as we go under the roof of
a cottage, and cross its threshold, all ceiled and banked up with
snow. They are glad and warm still, and as genial and cheery in winter
as in summer. As we stand in the midst of the pines in the flickering
and checkered light which straggles but little way into their maze, we
wonder if the towns have ever heard their simple story. It seems to us
that no traveler has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the
wonders which science is elsewhere revealing every day, who would not
like to hear their annals? Our humble villages in the plain are their
contribution. We borrow from the forest the boards which shelter and
the sticks which warm us. How important is their evergreen to the
winter, that portion of the summer which does not fade, the permanent
year, the unwithered grass! Thus simply, and with little expense of
altitude, is the surface of the earth diversified. What would human
life be without forests, those natural cities? From the tops of
mountains they appear like smooth-shaven lawns, yet whither shall we
walk but in this taller grass?

In this glade covered with bushes of a year's growth, see how the
silvery dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in such
infinite and luxurious forms as by their very variety atone for the
absence of color.
Observe the tiny tracks of mice around every stem,
and the triangular tracks of the rabbit. A pure elastic heaven hangs
over all, as if the impurities of the summer sky, refined and shrunk
by the chaste winter's cold, had been winnowed from the heavens upon
the earth.

Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens
seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and
distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a
Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.

How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred life
which still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and
woods covered with frost and snow, sees the sun rise!

"The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. "

The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in the remote
glens, even on the morning of the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and
Labrador, and for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians,
Novazemblaites, and Spitzbergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and
woodchopper, the fox, muskrat, and mink?

Still, in the midst of the arctic day, we may trace the summer to its
retreats, and sympathize with some contemporary life. Stretched over
the brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound meadows, we may observe
the submarine cottages of the caddis-worms, the larvae of the
Plicipennes; their small cylindrical cases built around themselves,
composed of flags, sticks, grass, and withered leaves, shells, and
pebbles, in form and color like the wrecks which strew the
bottom,--now drifting along over the pebbly bottom, now whirling in
tiny eddies and dashing down steep falls, or sweeping rapidly along
with the current, or else swaying to and fro at the end of some
grass-blade or root. Anon they will leave their sunken habitations,
and, crawling up the stems of plants, or to the surface, like gnats,
as perfect insects henceforth, flutter over the surface of the water,
or sacrifice their short lives in the flame of our candles at evening.
Down yonder little glen the shrubs are drooping under their burden,
and the red alderberries contrast with the white ground.