d sides of the Saranac
trout, the upholstery of a spider's web, the waist of the wasp fashionably
small without tight lacing, the lustrous eye of the gazelle, the ganglia of
the star-fish, have been discoursed upon; but it is left to us, fagged out
from a long ramble, to sit down on a log and celebrate the admirable
qualities of a turtle. We refer not to the curious architecture of its
house--ribbed, plated, jointed, carapace and plastron divinely
fashioned--but to its instincts, worthy almost of being called mental and
moral qualities.

The tortoise is wiser than many people we wot of, in the fact that he knows
when to keep his head in his shell. No sooner did we just now appear on the
edge of the wood than this animal of the order Testudinata modestly
withdrew. He knew he was no match for us. But how many of the human race
are in the habit of projecting their heads into things for which they have
no fittedness! They thrust themselves into discussions where they are
almost sure to get trod on. They will dispute about vertebrae with Cuvier,
or metaphysics with William Hamilton, or paintings with Ruskin, or medicine
with Doctor Rush, and attempt to sting Professor Jaeger to death with his
own insects. The first and last important lesson for such persons to learn
is, like this animal at our foot, to shut up their shell. If they could see
how, in the case of this roadside tortoise, at our appearance the carapace
suddenly came down on the plastron, or, in other words, how the upper bone
snapped against the lower bone, they might become as wise as this reptile.

We admire also the turtle's capacity of being at home everywhere. He
carries with him his parlor, nursery, kitchen, bed-chamber and bathroom.
Would that we all had an equal faculty of domestication! In such a
beautiful world, and with so many comfortable surroundings, we ought to
feel at home in any place we are called to be. While we cannot, like the
tortoise, carry our house on our back, we are better off than he, for by
the right culture of a contented spirit we may make the sky itself the
mottled shell of our residence, and the horizon all around us shall be the
place where the carapace shuts down on the plastron.

We admire still more the tortoise's determination to right itself. By way
of experiment, turn it upside down, and then go off a piece to see it
regain its position. Now, there is nothing when put upon its back which has
such little prospect of getting