EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 257 
or other, you would say, it had rained arrow¬ 
heads, for they lie all over the surface of Amer¬ 
ica. You may have your peculiar tastes, cer¬ 
tain localities in your town may seem from 
association unattractive and uninhabitable to 
you, you may wonder that the land bears any 
money value there, and pity some poor fellow 
who is said to survive in that neighborhood, 
but plow up a new field there, and you will find 
the omnipresent arrow point strewn over it, and 
it will appear that the red man with other 
tastes and associations lived there too. No 
matter how far from the modern road or meet¬ 
ing-house, no matter how near. They lie in 
the meeting-house cellar, and they lie in the 
distant cow-pasture. Some collections which 
were made a century ago by the curious like 
myself have been dispersed again, and they are 
still as good as new. You cannot tell the third- 
hand ones (for they are all second-hand) from 
the others, such is their persistent out-of-doors 
durability. They were chiefly made to be lost. 
They are sown like a grain that is slow to 
germinate, broadcast over the earth. As the 
dragon’s teeth bore a crop of soldiers, so these 
bear crops of philosophers and poets, and the 
same seed is just as good to plant again. It is 
a stone fruit. Each one yields me a thought. 
I come nearer to the maker of it than if I found 
IT 
