frightful, but sublime. Then, when the woeful surges rush through the 
trees, as | have seen ocean surges rush at high tides, with stormwinds 
behind them over snags of teeth of ocean rocks, where bravest ships 
of knit steel would have been laughingstocks to those furious waters— 
when such winds blow their tiger lungs | cease dreaming and leap 
to battle. I come to be imperious, as if I were Napoleon. My 
courage defies impossibility. I could climb Alps or break pyramids 
down, or leap from sea cliffs down into the boiling ocean in sheer 
luxury. Nothing daunts me. My spirit clamors with the storm. The 
giant branches twist and combat, like a cyclops caught in battle in 
the clammy arms of an octopus, and the wind blows battle charges, 
and all the storm drives like cavalrymen going into the fight. Then 
the music is something to be remembered for a century. Give me 
not always calm, with its hushed quiet, but the clamor of the riotous 
winds, when nature is fighting nature in frightful combat, and when 
neither combatant will yield. 
Friend, most things are on this farm. To own a winter tempest 
in the treetops and its tremendous music, what think you of that? | 
call that riches. I own acres of soil and sunshine, and winter and 
spring and October, but besides I own acres of angry wind, and furious 
onset, and a Niagara of organ music. How rich I am owning this farm! 
A wild crab stands on the hill where years ago they quarried stones 
for a college hard by. The quarry is now overgrown, a reminiscence. | 
am glad it is so, for I like its dishevelment, feeling its way back to 
nature. A huge thorn-tree stands on the quarry’s edge, and in the 
quarry are thickets of roses where birds nest in the sweet summer; and 
leaves in autumn gather in the disused quarry as in a pool where waters 
had drifted them, and in the quarry stands the wild crab. There it 
stands quite alone, but never lonely. In winter, its brawn of brazen 
muscle sneers at the tempests and looks rigid as death. No hint at 
smiling. I would as lief think a brazen pillar would bloom as to think 
this wild crab would flash into flower. Howbeit, when spring is come 
and sets up housekeeping, this crab lights a lamp like the pleasant 
flame of an evening sky, not crimson, but a gentle flame a man might 
warm him by, but would never burn his hands. This is a spring fire—this 
crab in bloom. How | love its tender twilight of crimson! I warm my 
eyes here and my heart; for hearts need warming as hands do on a 
chilly morning. And then, saturating the air like the perfume of a fair 
woman’s garments as she comes to meet her lover, is a whiff of this 
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