CHAPTER XV. 
OUT OF DOORS WITH NATURE. 
Out of doors ! "We weary of tliis unceasing labor — are 
choking to death of the stagnant air of heaped up cities, 
which, with their gutter-defiled trigonometries, set at defiance, 
of assoilation, the straight currents of Heaven's fresh air — ■ 
leaving us to moan and swelter amidst pestilential stagnations ! 
Let us go, 0 ye who yearn for purer odors than the steam 
of the kitchen ! Let us go forth — out of doors with Nature ! 
Aye ! and when her fresh breath shall come upon our seamed 
and heated brows, it shall be with an alchemy more strange 
than the Elixir of vain Cagliostro— more marvellous than all 
Spells, Philosophers' Stones, and Fortunatus' Caps — more 
potent than the wizard edicts of that eldest brother of shad- 
owy science — hoar Astrology ! 
To be sure we ought all of us to be astrologists — perhaps 
minus the science ; for should we not feel humbly — that, as 
we are children of the earth, so vfe may be moved as she is 
moved, in that of us which is earthy ? — and that, as the stars 
are God's flowers of thought — so are those meek wild flowers 
which we find upon her bosom, the starry bloomings of the 
thought of earth ! Should we not learn, too, to read their 
teachings? — ^perhaps thus the blossoming of Life may be 
renewed in us. 
Be this as it may — these flowers, and trees, and birds — we 
love them best and dearly " out of doors !" 
"We know that these Stars may speak drear things to us, 
