usness and the oceanic clarity ahead. Be very sure that none will
escape the complication, for we rise to different dimensions of
simplicity through such trials. War, Trade, the City, and all organised
hells are our training-fields. The tragedy is to remain, to remain fixed
in them--not to rush forth at length from our miserable
self-consciousness and self-serving in the midst of them. Cosmic
simplicity is ahead; the naturalness of the deeper health of man--that
is ahead.

That summer is identified with the Shore. I worked at the desk through
the long forenoons, and in a bathing-suit for the rest of the day. I
expect to get to the Shore again when the last of the builders leave the
bluff, when the bit of an orchard can run itself, and the big and little
trees are at home. They are in sick-beds now from transplanting. From
one to another I move almost every day. It is not that they are on my
land--that insensate motive is pretty well done away with. But they
have been uprooted and moved, and they are fighting to live. I sometimes
think that they need some one to watch. If one goes away for a
week--there is a change, sometimes for the worse. The sun strikes them
on a different side; their laterals and tap-roots have been severed;
they meet different conditions of soil than they were trained for. Much
water helps, but they must breathe, and sometimes mulch keeps them too
cold. Then they have their enemies like every other living thing--and
low in health from moving, they cannot withstand these foes without
help. The temporality of all things--even of the great imperturbable
trees--is a thought of endless visitation in Nature. She seems to say
morning and evening, "Do not forget that everything here must pass."

There is to be little woodland, a miniature forest, a hundred feet long
and thirty feet wide only. Beech and ash and elm are started
there--dogwoods and hawthorns and lilacs. Mulch from the woods is being
brought, and violets. Twice I have tried to make young hickories live,
but failed. I think the place where the roots are cut in transplanting
should be sealed with wax. A man here said that you can transplant
hickories if you get all the roots, but that they bleed to death even in
winter, if their laterals are severed.... I want the birds to come to
this little wood. Of course, it will be many years before it follows the
plan, but there is a smile in the idea. The hawthorns came whole; the
ash and beech are doing