STEEP TRAILS 

 I 



WILD WOOL 



MORAL improvers have calls to preach. I 

 have a friend who has a call to plough, and 

 woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that 

 falls under the savage redemption of his keen 

 steel shares. Not content with the so-called 

 subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and 

 moorland, he would fain discover some method 

 of reclamation applicable to the ocean and the 

 sky, that in due calendar time they might be 

 brought to bud and blossom as the rose. Our 

 efforts are of no avail when we seek to turn his 

 attention to wild roses, or to the fact that both 

 ocean and sky are already about as rosy as 

 possible the one with stars, the other with 

 dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical 

 developments of his culture are orchards and 

 clover-fields wearing a smiling, benevolent 

 aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a 

 near view discloses something barbarous in 

 them all. Wildness charms not my friend, 

 charm it never so wisely: and whatsoever may 

 be the character of his heaven, his earth seems 



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