172 With Feet to the Earth 



the discoveries by Hugh Miller, the re- 

 searches of Ferguson, the poetry of Burns, 

 were easy and natural results of their work- 

 a-day business in shops and fields. 



The charm of nature's company is that 

 it is always pure and sane, and it is the only 

 company that is never otherwise. It may 

 be gloomy, it may be terrifying, but it is 

 healthful, great, and lifting. One discovers 

 affinities and humanities in it ; even mathe- 

 matical accuracies and rhythms. We love 

 rhythm in the swing of the sea, the pulse of 

 the wind, the gait and flight of animals, but 

 it exists for the sight, no less, in the archi- 

 tectural recurrences of rock forms, as on the 

 Hudson palisades, in the columned forest, 

 the parallels of grass, the symmetry of 

 flowers, the ordering of the clouds. Trun- 

 dling homeward on the bicycle path, the 

 trees file past in the sunset with a lulling 

 effect, as of verse. Riding over a road in 

 twilight, the regular crescents of dark, left 

 by a joggling flood from a watering cart 

 and extending as far up the road as the 

 eye will carry, have this same quieting 

 effect of repetition, and joined with the 



