opmost
branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms,
the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried
straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger
jurymen who walked the streets--for it was court week--and to farmers
and lumber-dealers and woodchoppers and hunters, and not one had ever
seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell
of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as
perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from
the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the
heavens, above men's heads and unobserved by them. We see only the
flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed
their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer
for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red children as of her
white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen
them.

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed
over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering
the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barnyard
within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us
that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of
thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours.
There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,--the
gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got
up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season,
in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and
soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,--healthiness as of a
spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last
instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who
has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note?

The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter,
but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in
doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on
a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a
cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, "There is one of us well,
at any rate,"--and with a sudden gush return to my senses.

We had a remarkable sunset o