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The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table-Part38_Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of Nature

through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap



up a million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth

which was green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides and



ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe, - "What are these people

about?" And the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper



back, - "We will go and see." So the small herbs pack themselves

up in the least possible bundles, and wait until the wind steals to



them at night and whispers, "Come with me." Then they go softly

with it into the great city, - one to a cleft in the pavement, one



to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich

gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone where



nothing but a man is buried, - and there they grow, looking down on

the generations of men from mouldy roofs, looking up from between



the less-trodden pavements, looking out through iron cemetery-

railings. Listen to them, when there is only a light breath



stirring, and you will hear them saying to each other, - "Wait

awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those narrow green



lines that border the roads leading from the city, until they reach

the slope of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to each



other, - "Wait awhile!" By-and-by the flow of life in the streets

ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants - the smaller tribes always in



front - saunter in, one by one, very carelessseemingly, but very

tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each



other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to

be picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees



take up their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have

encamped in the market-place. Wait long enough and you will find



an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block in its yellow

underground arms; that was the cornerstone of the State-House. Oh,



so patient she is, this imperturbable Nature!

- Let us cry! -



But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks with the

schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not tell you something



about them. Let me alone, and I shall talk to you more than I

ought to, probably. We never tell our secrets to people that pump



for them.

Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know



something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat

more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her



reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a

library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman



goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the

dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, - but she goes into



all the corners, and attends to the leaves as much as the covers. -

Books are the NEGATIVE pictures of thought, and the more sensitive



the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest

lines are reproduced. A woman, (of the right kind,) reading after



a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her

gleanings are often the finest of the wheat.



But it was in talking of Life that we came most clearly together.

I thought I knew something about that, - that I could speak or



write about it somewhat to the purpose.

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up



water, - to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills

its pores lying seven years in a tan-pit, - to have winnowed every



wave of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through

the flume upon its float-boards, - to have curled up in the keenest



spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing-

sickness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or



four score years, - to have fought all the devils and clasped all

the angels of its delirium, - and then, just at the point when the



white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our

experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or



other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of

spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province.



The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets

with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes



before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken

eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a



balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which

this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the



palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had

left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the



loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before her. Yet, as




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