lived to be over one hundred years. He occupied a little
house on the side of a mountain, and lived, it was said, like the pigs
in the pen. Then there was Aunt Deborah Bouton, who lived in a little
house by a lonely road and took care of her little farm and her four
or five cows, winter and summer. Since I have lived here on the Hudson
there was a man who lived alone in an old stone house amid great filth
on the top of the hill above Esopus village.

In my own line of descent there was a Kelley who lived alone in a hut
in the woods, not far from Albany. I myself must have a certain amount
of solitude, but I love to hear the hum of life all about me. I like
to be secluded in a building warmed by the presence of other persons.

* * * * *

When I was a boy on the old farm, the bright, warm, midsummer days
were canopied with the mellow hum of insects. You did not see them or
distinguish any one species, but the whole upper air resounded like a
great harp. It was a very marked feature of midday. But not for fifty
years have I heard that sound. I have pressed younger and sharper ears
into my service, but to no purpose: there are certainly fewer
bumblebees than of old, but not fewer flies or wasps or hornets or
honey bees. What has wrought the change I do not know.

* * * * *

If the movements going on around us in inert matter could be magnified
so as to come within range of our unaided vision, how agitated the
world would seem! The so-called motionless bodies are all vibrating
and shifting their places day and night at all seasons. The rocks are
sliding down the hills or creeping out of their beds, the stone walls
are reeling and toppling, the houses are settling or leaning. All
inert material raised by the hand of man above the earth's surface is
slowly being pulled down to a uniform level. The crust of the earth is
rising or subsiding. The very stars in the constellations are shifting
their places.

If we could see the molecular and chemical changes and transformations
that are going on around us, another world of instability would be
revealed to us. Here we should see real miracles. We should see the
odorless gases unite to form water. We should see the building of
crystals, catalysis, and the movements of unstable compounds.

* * * * *

Think of what Nature does with varying degrees of temperature--solids,
fluids, gases