FLOWERS FROM A STUDENT'S WALKS.
As the animal dies of inanition if fed on but one kind of food, however congenial, yet lives if he has all in succession, so is it with complex man.
Learn retrenchment from the starving oyster, who spends his last energies in a new pearly layer suited to his shrunken form.
As animals which have no organs of special sense know not light or sound as we do, yet shrink from a hand or candle because their whole bodies are dimly conscious, thus we have a glimmering perception of infinite truths and existences which we cannot grasp or fully know because our minds have no special organs for them.
The prick in the butterfly's wing will be in the full-grown insect a great blemish. The speck in thy child's nature, if fondly overlooked now, will become a wide rent traversing all his virtues.
As mineral poisons kill, because by their strong affinity they decompose the blood and form new stony substances, so the soul possessed by too strong an affinity for gold petrifies.
Our principles are central forces, our desires tangential; it requires both to describe the curve of life.
The slightest inclination of a standing body virtually narrows its base; the least departure from integrity lessens our foundation. The pyramid, broad-based, yet heaven-pointed, is the firmest figure. Most characters are inconsistent, unsymmetrical, and have a base wanting extent in some direction.
Be not over-curious in assigning causes or predicting consequences; the same diagonal may be formed by various combining forces.
Through water the musical sound is not transmitted, only the harsh material noise. In air the noise is heard very near, the musical sounds only are transmitted. Be thankful, poets and prophets, when you live in an element such that your uncomely features are known only to your own village.
"Do not sing its fundamental note too loud near a delicate glass, or it will break," whispered my friend to me, as he saw me gazing at this lovely being.
Seek the golden mean of life. Like the temperate regions, it has but few thorny plants.
Be doubly careful of those to whom nature has been a niggard. The oak and the palm take their own forms under all circumstances; the fungi seem to owe theirs to outward influences.
It is a poor plant that crisps quickly into wood. It is a meagre character which runs perpetually into prejudices.
As light suffers from no change of medium when it falls perpendicularly, so the consequences of a perfectly upright action, or cause of action, are strictly fortunate. But let it be ever so little oblique, the new medium will exaggerate its obliquity; and the farther it departs from uprightness, the more frightfully it is distorted.
Hoops and coins, which cannot preserve their equilibrium when in rest, keep it when set in motion. Man also in activity finds his safest position.
As it takes a diamond to cut and shape a diamond, so there are faults so obstinate that they can be worn away only by life-long contact with similar faults in those we love.
Learn the virtue of action. Who inquires whether momentum comes from mass or velocity? But velocity has this advantage; it depends on ourselves.
The grass is green after these October rains, because in the July drought it struck deep roots.
MISERIES.
No. 1.
Did you ever try to eat a peach elegantly and gracefully? Of course you have. Show me a man who has not tried the experiment, when under the restraint of human surveillance, and I shall look upon him as a curiosity. There is no fruit, certainly, which has so fair and alluring an exterior; but few content themselves with feasting their eyes upon it. How fresh and ripe it looks as it lies upon the plate, with its rosy cheek turned temptingly upward! How cool and soft is the downy skin to the touch! And the fragrance, so suggestive of its rich, delicious flavor, who can resist? Ah, unhappy wight! Bitterly you shall repent your rashness. Any other fruit can be eaten with comparative ease and politeness; a peach was evidently intended only to be looked at, or enjoyed beneath your own tree, where no eye may watch and criticize your motions.
I see you, in imagination, at a party, standing in the middle of the room, plate in hand, regarding your peach as if it were some great natural curiosity. A sudden jog of your elbow compels you to a succession of most dexterous balancings as your heavy peach rolls from side to side, knocks down your knife, and threatens to plunge after it when you stoop to regain it. You look distractedly round for a table, but all are occupied. Even the corner of the mantel-shelf holds a plate, and you enviously see the owner thereof leaning carelessly against the chimney, and looking placidly round upon his less fortunate companions. You glance at the different groups to see if any one else is in your most unenviable predicament. Ah, yes! Yonder stands a gentleman worse off yet, for, in addition to your perplexities, he is talking with a young, laughing girl, who is watching his movements, with a merry twinkle in her bright eyes. He evidently wishes to astonish her by his dexterity, and disappoint her roguish expectations. He holds his plate firmly in his left hand, and proceeds, at once, to cut his peach in halves. Deuce take the blunt silver knife! The tough skin resists its pressure. The knife and plate clash loudly together; the peach is bounding and rolling at the very feet of the young lady, who is in an ecstasy of laughter. Ah! she herself has no small resemblance to a peach, fair, beautiful, and attractive without, and, I sadly fear, with a hard heart beneath.
Are you yet more miserable than before? Turn then to yonder sober-looking gentleman, who certainly seems sufficiently composed to perform the difficult manoeuvre. He has the advantage of a table to be sure; but that is not every thing. He begins right, by deliberately removing the woolly skin. Now he lays the slippery peach in his plate, and makes a plunge at it with his knife. A sharp, prolonged screech across his plate salutes the ears of all the bystanders, and a fine slice of juicy pulp is flung unceremoniously into the face of the gentleman opposite, who certainly does not look very grateful for the unexpected gift.
Every one, of course, has seen the awkward accident. O no! That pretty, animated girl upon the sofa is much too pleasantly engaged, that is evident, to be watching her neighbors. Playing carelessly with her fan, and casting many sparkling glances upward at the two gentlemen who are vying with each other in their gallant attentions, she has enough to do without noticing other people. She is happily unconscious of the mortification which is in store for her, or wilfully shuts her eyes to the peril. Alas! Her hand is resting, even now, upon the destroyer of all her present enjoyment, the beautiful, fragrant, treacherous peach. With a nonchalance really shocking to the anxious beholder, she raises it, and breaks it open, talking the while, and scarcely bestowing a thought upon what she is about. Dexterously done; but-O luckless maiden!-the fruit is ripe, and rich, and juicy, and the running drops fall, not into her plate, but upon the delicate folds of her dress.
The merry repartee dies away upon her lips, as she becomes conscious of the catastrophe. It is with a forced smile that she declares, "It is nothing; O, not of the slightest consequence!" That unlucky peach! How many blunders, how many pauses, how many absent-minded remarks it occasions! She makes the most frenzied attempts to regain her former gayety, but in vain. Her gloves are stained and sticky with the flowing juice, and she is oppressed by the conviction that all her partners for the rest of the evening will hate her most heartily. An expression of real vexation steals over her pretty face, and she gives up her plate to one of the attendant beaux, with not so much as a wish that he will return to her. Where are the arch smiles, the lively tones, the quick and ready responses now? Her spirit is quenched. Her manner has become subdued, depressed,-shall I say it?-yes, even sulky.