264 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
ows and ponds. So they go anxious and ear¬ 
nest to hide their nests under the pole. The 
gulls, more used to boats and sails, will often 
fly quite near without manifesting alarm. 
March 29 and 30, 1842. Though nature’s 
laws are more immutable than any despot’s, 
they rarely seem rigid, but relax with license in 
summer weather. We are not often nor harshly 
reminded of the things we may not do. I am 
often astonished to see how long and with what 
manifest infringement of the natural laws some 
men I meet in the highway maintain life. Na¬ 
ture does not deny them quarter. They do 
not die without priest. All the while she re¬ 
joices, for if they are not one part of her, they 
are another. 
I am convinced that consistency is the secret 
of health. How many a poor man, striving to 
live a pure life, pines and dies after a life of 
sickness, and his successors doubt if nature is 
not pitiless, while the confirmed and consistent 
sot who is content with his rank life like mush¬ 
rooms, a mass of corruption, still dozes comfort¬ 
ably under a hedge. He has made his peace 
with himself; there is no strife. Nature is 
really very kind .and liberal to all persons of 
vicious habits. They take great licenses with 
her. She does not exhaust them with many 
excesses. 
