or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at
best only a curious philological fact.

For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border
life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and
transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state
into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.
Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a
will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor
firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast
and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in
the familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds
himself in another land than is described in their owners' deeds, as it
were in some faraway field on the confines of the actual Concord, where
her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests
ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these
bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a mist; but
they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the
glass, and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from
beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no
trace, and it will have no anniversary.

I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting
sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden
rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I
was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining
family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord,
unknown to me--to whom the sun was servant--who had not gone into
society in the village--who had not been called on. I saw their
park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's
cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew.
Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do
not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not.
They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters.
They are quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly
through their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the muddy
bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies.
They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their
neighbor--notwithstanding