to the morning its light, and to the violet its blue, and to the golden-rod 
its gold, and to the whip-poor-will his dolorous cry, and to the rose its 
blushes, and to the stars their light; and after he has given to all he 
has not yet begun. He is the affluent God and his resources are past 
all possibility of exhaustion. 
There is a patch of plum-trees fringing the edges of the cloverfield, 
thick-sown they are—God sowed them—and when spring is new, they 
are a tall pile of snow fresh fallen, only there blows from them an odor 
not of snowdrifts or winter, since snowdrifts are odorless; plum-sown 
drifts are odor-full. Sweet it is after long winter months, when woods 
and fields have all their odors sealed—for frozen fields are odorless—to 
walk over my hillfield and on a sudden have wafted in my face odors 
that might have been distilled for kings to use on coronation days, and 
feel myself in the path of the winds a-blowing from my drift of plum 
blossoms, My heart sings, ‘Spring is here! Spring is here!’’ And 
the meadowlark singing to the sun makes not more music than my 
heart, with its bird-call, “Spring is come, is come!" 
Friend, I can see you want my farm; but I remind you of the com- 
mandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s’’ farm. Let us go 
down through the woods slowly. Make no haste, for woods are not made 
to pass through lightly. God has been a good while growing these trees 
and is not through yet. Walk down from the crest of the hill through 
the thickets where vines and briers tangle (get some nettles on your 
clothes—so—you look better), and pass that big elm, off with your hat, 
man; and now lift up your eyes—that is my orchard. Do you see long 
rows of apple trees? Why, I have come up through great tribulation to 
get them. Every one represents courage on my part, besides some 
trifling expense, and no end of forbearance. Those of mine own house- 
hold have flouted me as a visionary and have looked knowingly at each 
other, as to say, ‘‘Poor dear, his reason was once as balanced as ours.”’ 
Genius is not understood, Columbus found it so; | have found it so. 
Great dreamers are always derided (see Palissy the potter, and Morse 
and Goodyear). Because I profess to see the day when, from those 
boughs apples shall hang their crimson spheres, even that person related 
to me, as Job’s wife was to him, has snubbed me publicly and held me 
up domestically to the ridicule of mine own children; but I persevered. 
Genius does. I have. Each year | planted a new installment of apples 
till now I have some thirty acres or over sown to them. I have sown 
the wind, but to this writing I have not reaped the whirlwind, nor even 
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