A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



There were always some frosty crystals in the 

 Doctor s talk. He invariably blew from the 

 west. 



In such purposeless wandering as ours we were 

 sure to stumble on hamlets lying between the hills 

 snugly, with blue ribbons of river winding through, 

 as if the toy houses were strung upon them. They 

 were all alike, sending up little pillars of smoke in 

 the mornings lazily, which spread out in amber 

 clouds above, that gave a sort of auroral drench 

 of brown sherry to the view. I suppose the con 

 tinent is dotted with them from the Atlantic to 

 the Pacific ; and looked at from the vantage- 

 ground of the morning through the veil of the 

 ascending incense, these little towns suggest for 

 civilization the same germinative process that 

 Nature employs. They cling along the little 

 rivers like the frost-work, but they have in them 

 the enfolded fibres of cities. To a man somewhat 

 bruised by too much life, the complacency of 

 these villages was interesting. They lacked cor 

 porate self-consciousness. A delightful air of 

 improvisation hung over them, as if the people 

 had accidentally met there, and, finding it pleas 

 ant, had concluded to stop, a natural accretion and 

 solidification of dispersed agricultural elements 

 taking on the first form of social life. When we 

 penetrated into one of these hamlets in search of 

 its tavern, these characteristics became more pro 

 nounced. The town held easily and loosely to 

 gether, linked by the wheelwright, the blacksmith, 

 the storekeeper, and the shoemaker, into a stout 



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