Various

“ WHILE snow still sparkles in the frost furrows on Chocorua's peak, the first rubythroats appear in the warm meadows and forest glades at the south of the mountain. They love the flowers as others of their race love them, and when apple blossoms bless the air with perfume and visions of lovely color and form, the humming birds revel in the orchards of the North as their brothers delight in the rich flowers of the tropics. It is not, however, among flowers that the Chocorua rubythroats are happiest or most frequently seen. ”

“ Every star is in motion. The sun, so mighty and all-powerful to us, is but a feeble light among thousands of millions of others scattered so sparsely throughout the never-ending expanse that centuries are needed even for their light to traverse the intervening spaces. In the feeble light of that sunbeam, vital to us, the earth, our mother, shines like the merest mote. Its past is limited, its future insecure. With its finite history the fate of mankind is bound up.
We must not forget that the modern view of the universe is very different from that of Copernicus. ”

“ And all engage in the work; all take hold with a will, even with joy. For they feel the blood course more freely in their veins, hear the wind breathe sweeter music, and see the light weave a more lovely world of colors. Their dormant energies are awakened, the heightened color on the cheek, the lustrous laughing eye, the merry mobile lip, the fair white hand, the whole person speaks in eloquent language the pleasure which springs from progress, or a work well done. ”

“ From miles of distance the eye fastens itself upon the tree tops; the dark green is a break in the landscape, and like the black shadow of clouds it seems to go and come, the gentle undulations of the desert throwing it now and again out of sight. We had penetrated but a moderate distance into the desert, but the coming of the oasis was a relief that can hardly be described—those dense groves of date palms and the circulating streams of water. What must, indeed, the oasis be to those who have wearily plodded its sands for weeks at a time! ”

“ And when in herb and tree, in every living plant, the summer's work is ended and hideous winter falls, the new cells, summer's distillation left, do in all perennials actually survive, lest of the effect of beauty, beauty be bereft. There is no more marvelous picture in all the vegetal world than that of a great tree with all its myriad cells, in summer so filled with the rush of life's activity and change that we might hear its music, in autumn sinking to quiescence, and the winter's silent chill where liquid prisoners sleep 'neath walls of glass. ”

“ When the northern winter, over-dark and over-long, is past; when returning light and warmth inspire sleeping nature with new life; when the blue anemone, close to the fast-retreating snow, looks up into the cheering sun; when the birch puts on its delicate fresh green; when the thrush pours into the fragrant air its love-song, then, as Linné puts it, "love seizes even the plants," and the spirit of spring awakens the heart of man into a new joy. ”

“ He lived, this man of the long-forgotten past, as all men live—getting his food, begetting his kind, loving, hating, fighting, rejoicing in the coming of the spring, pleased with his own person and its adornment, repeating the tales of his forefathers about the fire—then vanishing into the all-containing soil of the earth whence he came.
What man, once quickened by the spirit of the earth and touched by its thousand sweet influences, would ever think of resigning this mortal inheritance, with all its certainty of dissolution, for an immortality in some unknown, untried sphere of existence? ”

“ A wall of very muddy water, white crested and fully ten feet high, was approaching with the speed of a railroad train, breaking over and overwhelming the resisting ebb tide of the river, which in front of the pagoda was still running out with a speed of six or seven miles an hour and fighting every foot of the monster's advance. It was a battle of the flood against the ebb, and the flood, backed by the irresistible power of the ocean's rhythmic puise, was swallowing up the ebb with an on-rush which must be seen to be fully appreciated. ”

“ Under their dome of blue sky and snowy clouds the Isles of June, in their setting of sapphire, are buried under a mantle of verdure so dense and luxuriant that the vegetation thrives as if in a hot-house, and, abandoning the rocky and sterile ground and contenting themselves with the warm, moist sea-breeze, not only the mosses and ferns and orchids and bromeliads, but large trees as well, grow tier above tier, climbing over each other's heads in their efforts to escape the struggle for existence and to obtain air and sunlight and standing-room. ”

“ Some day it will be felt as a loss and a crime if any one who could be an explorer is forced to become anything else. And even then, after countless ages of education and scientific progress, the true university will still stand on the shore, its walls still washed by the same unending sea, the boundless ocean of possible human knowledge.
The new growth of the American university which we honor to-day is simply its extension and its freedom, so that a scholar can find place within its walls. The scholar can not breathe in confined air. ”

“ If we continue our excursion till sunset, we are overtaken in returning to the town by the sudden coming on of darkness, for the twilight is very short in this low latitude. But, hardly has the departed sun ceased to gild the crowns of the cocoa-palms, than the moon sheds her soft light through the delicately feathered foliage of the tamarind trees under which we are walking. With every succeeding minute the crowns of these trees grow more transparent and open; for the leaves are putting themselves to sleep, and folding their filaments up against their petioles. ”

“ Some of the pleasantest days I have ever known in the open have been spent in the winter woods, when the snow was on the ground and everything seemed still and unfamiliar. Every little sound is accented on a cold day, and the creaking of a swaying limb or the note of a bird comes to you with almost startling distinctness. Somehow you feel on such days that you are more a part of the things about you than in the full flush of summer. It is like meeting people stripped of all the artificial distinctions of clothes and position. ”

“ I shall not consider the costs of wars long since fought, a burden strapped for all time on the backs of the toilers of Europe. I shall not consider the cost of future wars, never to be fought, but provided for in the budget of every nation, again a burden unbearable on those whose chief relation to the life of nations is the burdens nations needlessly impose. I shall not depict the growing strength of the invisible empire of bondholders who are fast becoming the owners of the civilized world, and whose silent nod determines the issue of every great empire in war or peace. ”

“ It opens before us the mountains, the vales, the woods, the lawns, the brooks and rivers, the fertile plains and flowery fields, adorned with every hue, the expanse of ocean, and the glories of the firmament; and, as the eye would be dazzled were a deep red color or a brilliant white to be spread over the face of Nature, the Divine Goodness has clothed the heavens with blue, and the earth with green—the two colors which are the least fatiguing and the most pleasing to the organs of sight ”

“ Now and again there is a flash of color, where some cockatoo or parrot or brilliant butterfly appears only to vanish in the leafy maze, or here and there through a break in the canopy a furtive beam of sunlight penetrates to gild the greenness of the shade. One looks in vain for dead trees and old decaying logs for all is life in this luxuriant growth. ”

“ The child reaches out its hand for the moon; it finds delight in the glancing sunbeam; it is surprised by its own reflection in the glass; it is charmed by all forms of rapid motion; it dances gleefully before the fire; it is made curious by the rustling of a leaf. The little man is full of the spirit of investigation. He is a true experimenter. He is constantly putting questions to Nature, and, after a fashion, he is finding answers. He awakens to consciousness in a world that is for him full of wonders and surprises. There is no truer fairy-land than that in which he daily moves. ”

“ We could hardly imagine a landscape of our country, with its alternations of hill and valley, field and wood, pasture and meadow, threaded with streams or dotted with lakes, not enlivened by nimble birds. How bare and empty would our orchards appear, even in the splendor of their spring bloom, without the twitter, the clear songs, the joyous melodies, and the cries of the robins, bobolinks, cat-birds, and blackbirds that haunt them! For any real enjoyment of Nature, we must have the brisk, songful, and noisy bird-life around us. ”

“ Far beyond the keenest of human vision is its range of sight. If the light is good, this sensitive plate of glass will have recorded and discerned a thousand uplifted faces as perfectly as the human eye perceives the features of a single countenance. Every expression of joy or sorrow, every peculiarity of dress or attitude, the leaves of a forest or the grass by the wayside, will have been seen and delineated and retained perfectly in far less than the briefest possible twinkling of a human eye. ”

“ Never a sound is heard from these depths. Never comes a perfume or an odor from this garden. If we pluck one of these flowers from its home, it collapses and fades. We are allowed a glimpse of this new world, but never an approach into it, and we are left to marvel at Nature's lavish extravagance in creating life.
The active denizens of this luxuriant garden are the fish that dart from clump to clump of coral, or prowl among the broken rocks, or hover in swarms about some, single coral head, or listlessly rest in the hollows of the bottom. The bright colors of tropical fish are well known. ”

“ If the slow, labored up journey was a revelation with its worries and anxieties, what can be said of the down journey with its kaleidoscopic; panorama of sand bars, Indian villages, far-away snowy mountains, dense forests of mighty cottonwoods, lofty heights which tower above us clad to their very summits with eternal green, mountain streams, and innumerable waterfalls and cascades! And what shall one say of that memorable ride through the cañon, the wheel reversed and throwing water over the pilot house, the boat rocking and swaying to and fro! ”

“ In the pure frosty air the stars seem splintered and multiplied indefinitely, and the brighter ones shine with a splendor of light and color unknown to the denizen of the smoky city, whose eyes are dulled and blinded by the glare of street-lights. There one may detect the delicate shade of green that lurks in the imperial blaze of Sirius, the beautiful rose-red light of Aldebaran, the rich orange hue of Betelgeuse, the blue-white radiance of Rigel, and the pearly luster of Capella. ”

“ We approached Nanking in the small hours of the morn, and as I sat on deck watching the grayness of the early dawn give way to the upward slanting pinkish beams of the orb of day I beheld a glorious sight—the water at my feet, then the curving shore, beyond to the eastward the graceful towers and pagodas of the city, and in the distance the peaceful gray and bluish hills, along the sculptured heights of which the first gleams of a sun, that would soon be altogether dazzling, were silently but swiftly stealing. ”

“ Few mothers have not felt the renewal of youth which comes when in the woods, on the mountain, by the shore; have not found their cares slipping insensibly from them when gazing into the depths of the sky, listening to the murmur of a brook, or inhaling the sweet breath of the summer wind. Let me assure these mothers that every step in the study of any natural science will open more wide the door through which Nature will pour such healing balm. ”

“ The weather-beaten crags, the shifting sands, the sands of unmoving and monotonous silence, the slowly wandering caravans, the long and weirdlike shadows which stalk over the surface in the horizontal light of the rising or setting sun, are all pictures that impress by their individuality; and to these are added others which are hardly less interesting or picturesque in their local color. It is, however, the oasis that is the redeeming pearl of the desert. No poetic temperament is needed to prepare one for the enjoyment of its coming. ”

“ Nothing around us seems to stir; we are far from the roar of cities; above us the silence of the stars, beneath us a soft carpet of snow; not a sound to be heard, not a breath of wind stirring the branches.
And yet we know that all this is an illusion! Those bright points of light on the dark firmament are solar systems, whirling through space two hundred times faster than a cannon-ball, and under our feet the delicate snow-crystals are groups of atoms, which tremble with billions of vibrations every second. ”

“ The mass of the army follows the scouts. They come by thousands and thousands, in so thick masses as to obscure the sun. The explorer is forced to come to the shore veiled in this living, fluttering, screeching, rushing cloud. The ducks, if they are not actually sitting, fly, the snipes hastily seek the sea, and the wagtails follow in noisy flight, but the host of gulls stands firm, screams and bustles and whirls and plunges, as if it could prevent the advance by noise and sham fighting. ”