the hard earth, and at last plunges in the air
without effecting any result. Significant!

* * * * *

"Green feed, and every thing brought home in the sap, is free from
tithes.

* * * * *

"In cutting corn, the reaper must lay the swath behind him, so as to
have nothing before him but the blades still standing. So with the
deeds that we have done. They must be out of the sight, so that all our
attention may be turned upon what yet remains to do.

* * * * *

"When in the distance I see the mowers bowing and rising so regularly,
it seems as if they were going through some ceremonious ritual of
prayer.

* * * * *

"The new paling of the manor-house garden is being painted green. Dry
wood rots in wind and weather if not covered with a coating. Nature
furnishes a secure vestment for all her creatures: men tear off these
natural coats and are compelled to replace them with artificial ones.

"What if education were nothing more than oil-paint, a poor surrogate
for the fresh lustre of Nature? No: it is Nature itself, elevated,
purified; men like those around me here----

* * * * *

"Valentine, the old carpenter, is so forgetful that he walks along the
road with the cart-whip on his shoulder, and cries 'Hoy!' without
perceiving that his cows have turned into a wrong road forty yards
behind him. Is not this the lot of many rulers?

* * * * *

"In a garden by the roadside is a weeping willow, the boughs of which
have been tied and twisted into all sorts of ellipses, circles, oblique
and right angles, until they have taken this shape permanently.

"The boughs of sorrow are tractable, and may be cramped into almost any
deformity; still, the irrepressible vigor of Nature will restore the
original growth and proportion. What is it that makes farmers so fond
of distorting Nature? Why are they so prone to maltreat the weeping
willow, the loveliest of trees? Perhaps there lies at the very root of
human nature a disposition to indemnify one's self for a year's hard
labor by making a plaything of the subject of it on a holiday.

* * * * *

"(At the crucifix in the Target Field.) Although there were some Jews
living in the place where I was born, I never thought much about them.