ad out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature
never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern
bedstead, but she always has one of her flat pattern live timekeepers
to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments
sticking out like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless,
slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more horrible in their pulpy
stillness than even in the infernal wriggle of maturity. But no sooner
is the stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this
compressed and blinded community of creeping things, than all of them
which enjoy the luxury of legs--and some of them have a good many--rush
round wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, and end in
a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by
sunshine. _Next year_ you will find the grass growing tall and green
where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle
had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the
broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as
the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their
glorified being.

--The young fellow whom they call John saw fit to say, in his very
familiar way,--at which I do not choose to take offence, but which I
sometimes think it necessary to repress,--that I was coming it rather
strong on the butterflies.

No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those images, the butterfly
as well as the others. The stone is ancient error. The grass is human
nature borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes which
are found beneath are the crafty beings that thrive in darkness, and the
weaker organisms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is
whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter
whether he do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year
stands for the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain
blanched and broken, rise in its full stature and native hues, in the
sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of
a new-born humanity. Then shall beauty--Divinity taking outlines and
color--light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the
beautified spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held
a poor grub, which would never have found wings, had not the stone been
lifted.

You never need think you can turn over any old fa