![]() As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. ![]() There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I did not read books the first summer I hoed beans. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard.
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