reedom and blue
sparklin' water, and blue sky above. Nater wuz foldin' us in her
faithful arms and sweepin' us away from the too civilized world into
the freshness and onstudied beauty of her own hants.

I sot there perfectly entranced, and nothin' occurred to break my rapt
musin's save my pardner's request for a nut cake and a biled egg, and
a longin' murmer about Coney Island and a wish that he wuz started for
there. But that didn't seem to quell my emotions down. I handed the
food to him with a hand that seemed some distance off from my real
self.

The first big island we went by wuz called Carleton. Standin' on it,
loomin' up tall and solemn and mysterious, wuz some high stun towers.
They stood up there as if tellin' us how little we knew. They looked
like great exclamation points set there to express the futility of our
boasted knowledge.

Who built them chimblys? Who started the fires under 'em? Who drinked
the tea that wuz steeped there? What kind of tea wuz it? Did the water
bile? How did them tea drinkers feel and look and act while them
chimblys carried off the smoke of their fire? What wuz their highest
aspirations and idees? What wuz their deepest joy and keenest pain?
What goles did they see ahead on 'em, and did they ever set down on
them goles? I can't tell nor Josiah can't. A hundred years ago one
moulderin' old head-stun leaned over the grave of one of that company.
Wuz it a glad or a sad heart that rested there in that ancient grave?
Well, the sadness or the joy is jest as much lost and forgot as the
smoke that wafted up towards the sky on the June and December mornin's
of 1600 odd.

As I thought of all these things, them lofty towers riz up like
gigantick skeleton fingers outstretched mockin'ly. They seemed to be
sayin' to me and Josiah and the world at large, "You may boast of
your inventions, your marvels of this age, your civilization, your
glory, your pryin' into dark continents and unexplored regions of land
and science. But what do you know anyway? Of what consequence are you?
How soon your life and your memory will be utterly wiped out and
forgotten. How soon the careless sun will forget the shadow you cast
on the earth's bosom. How soon the green grass of the forgettin' earth
will grow fresh and untrodden and cover up the traces of your eager
footsteps, no matter how deep you thought you had made the track you
walked in. How soon it is all wiped away as if it had never been. And
Mom Nate