8 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



to us from the vast empire, whose merchants were many, 

 "even as the stars in heaven." But a man came from a 

 far off island, he gathered the stones that lay scattered 

 about, and the silence, that had brooded over them for 

 countless ages, was broken by his magic touch. Here he 

 found on a brick strange and yet familiar signs; there 

 he dug, out of the rubbish of thousands of years, costly 

 slabs of alabaster, and on them were carved gigantic, awe- 

 inspiring figures. The Bible in his hand he read, and 

 name after name resumed life and meaning, until at last 

 the whole of its wondrous splendor was unfolded before 

 him. 



And thus there lies many a stone in our path that 

 might teach us lessons of grave import for when the tra- 

 ditions of men are silent, stones become eloquent. But 

 we thrust them aside and we say with contempt: It is 

 only a pebble! We call it dead, lifeless nature. Oh, if 

 it were a noble animal, a beauteous plant ! or even a 

 rusty coin, a worm-eaten parchment, upon which some an- 

 cient dreamer wrote his long-forgotten fancies about heaven 

 and earth how we would tax our ingenuity, how we would 

 search through the wide field of human knowledge, and 

 bring the wisdom of ages to bear upon the great secret! 

 For are not coins and parchments the work of man 1 He 

 deigns not to read the bright letters with which Earth 

 herself has written her history on the simple sides of a 

 pebble. 



Only a pebble ! Oh man, that stone which you thrust 

 so contemptuously out of your way, is older than all else 

 on this earth! When the waters under heaven were 



