208 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
forever tantalize the still surface. Above these 
the slender, dark blue insect waves his dusky 
wings, like a liberated ripple of the brook, and 
takes the few stray sunbeams on his lustrous 
form. Whence came the correspondence be- 
tween this beautiful shy creature and the moist, 
dark nooks, shot through with stray and transi- 
tory sunlight, where it dwells? The analogy 
is as unmistakable as that between the scorch- 
ing heats of summer and the shrill cry of the 
cicada. They suggest questions that no savant 
can answer, mysteries that wait, like Goethe’s 
secret of morphology, till a sufficient poet can 
be born. And we, meanwhile, stand helpless 
in their presence, as one waits beside the tele- 
graphic wire, while it hums and vibrates, charged 
with all fascinating secrets, above the heads of 
a wondering world. 
It is by the presence of pathways on the 
earth that we know it to be the habitation of 
man; in the barest desert, they open to us a 
common humanity. It is the absence of these 
that renders us so lonely on the ocean, and 
makes us glad to watch even the track of our 
own vessel. But on the mountain-top, how 
eagerly we trace out the “road that brings 
places together,” as Schiller says. It is the 
first thing we look for; till we have found it, 
each scattered village has an isolated and churl- 
