A PITCH-PINE MEDITATION. 



So waved the pine-tree through my thought. 



EMERSON. 



IN outward, every-day affairs, in what 

 we foolishly call real life, man is a stickler 

 for regularity, a devout believer in the max- 

 im, " Order is heaven's first law." He sets 

 his house at right angles with the street; 

 lays out his grounds in the straightest of 

 straight lines, or in the most undeviating of 

 curves ; selects his shade-trees for their trim, 

 geometrical habit ; and, all in all, carries 

 himself as if precision and conformity were 

 the height of virtue. Yet this same man, 

 when he comes to deal with pictorial rep- 

 resentations, makes up his judgment ac- 

 cording to quite another standard ; finding 

 nothing picturesque in tidy gardens and 

 shaven lawns, discarding without hesitation 

 every well-rounded, symmetrical tree, de- 

 lighting in disorder and disproportion, lov- 

 ing a ruin better than the best appointed 



