A Thousand-Mile Walk 
and golden with a profusion of flowers. Among 
these I discovered a small bush whose yellow 
flowers were ideal; all the parts were present 
regularly alternate and in fives, and all sepa- 
rate, a plain harmony. 
When a page is written over but once it may 
be easily read; but if it be written over and 
over with characters of every size and style, it 
soon becomes unreadable, although not a single 
confused meaningless mark or thought may oc- 
cur among all the written characters to mar 
its perfection. Our limited powers are similarly 
perplexed and overtaxed in reading the inex- 
haustible pages of nature, for they are written 
over and over uncountable times, written in 
characters of every size and color, sentences 
composed of sentences, every part of a char- 
acter a sentence. There is not a fragment in 
all nature, for every relative fragment of one 
thing is a full harmonious unit in itself. All 
together form the one grand palimpsest of 
the world. 
One of the most common plants of my pas- 
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