The Mature-Atudent 
glad that it is not a white-winged spirit, or a disem- 
bodied voice. And let him wonder the more that so 
plain a singer knows so divine a song. 
Our philosopher mistakes his own dominant mood 
for the constant mood of nature. But nature has no 
constant mood. No more have we. Dawn and dusk 
are different moods. The roll of the prairie is unlike 
the temper of a winding cowpath in a New England 
pasture. Nature is not always sublime, awful, and 
mysterious; and no one but a philosopher is persist- 
ently contemplative. Indeed, at four o’clock on a 
June morning in some old apple orchard, even the 
philosopher would shout, — 
“ Hence, loathéd melancholy!” 
He is in no mind for meditation; and it is just pos- 
sible, before the day is done, that the capture of a 
drifting seed of the dandelion and the study of its 
fairy wings might so add to the wonder, if not to 
the sweetness, of the flower, as to give him thought 
for a sermon. 
There are times when the companionship of your 
library is enough; there are other times when you 
want a single book, a chapter, a particular poem. It 
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