boys, go,—­and girls, too, for that matter,—­on flower and moss hunts!—­and ye, dear middle-aged people, send them, and go also upon the same!  Find something that will tempt you into the woods,—­something neither berries nor sassafras,—­something which cannot be eaten or sold, but which will simply give you a sense and a love of beauty.  These pages have been written to show that it lies at your very doors,—­that nothing but stout boots, an old coat or jacket, and an observant eye, is needed.  When you come to be saints, or even to be men, there will be plenty of active work to do, if so be that you will only do it.  Then, in careful regard to your bodies, you may have hard-trotting (not fast-trotting) horses, pickerel-backed boats, and a billiard-room over the stable,—­if your canonization seem to require it.  But the saint, if he be true saint, needs no such care.  He will get work enough, hard, physical work, if only in trotting up and down the steep stairs of tenant-houses, to keep his digestion in tolerable order.  It is only your pseudo-saint, who cuddles himself for the pulpit and the platform, and keeps the safety-valve down with midnight sittings while “rosining up” the furnaces with strong coffee, that will come to grief by collapse of flues.  If a man, whether sinner or saint, will run races for the honor of being the fastest boat in the river of popular favor, he must take the consequences.

But for the poor, benighted, heathen sinner, desiring enjoyment that shall be honest, cheap, satisfying, and attainable, I say, in the full faith of the creed of Nemophily,—­Get into the woods!  No matter what you expect to find there,—­go and see what you can find.  Don’t walk for “constitutionals,” without an object at the end or on the way.  Keep your feet well shod and your eyes open.  Bring home all the flowers and pretty wood-growths you can, and you may find that you have been entertaining angels unawares.  Find out about them all you can yourself, and then (in spite of a previous tirade against botany, be it said) go to BIGELOW’S “PLANTS OF BOSTON” and learn more.

SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW.

A fatiguing journey up six long, winding flights of smoothly-waxed stairs carried me to the door of the room I occupied in the Place ——.  But no matter for the name of the Place; no one, I am confident, will visit Paris for the express purpose of satisfying himself that I am to be depended upon, and that there is a house of so many stones in the Place Maubert.  Here I lived, au premier au dessous du soleil, in the enjoyment of no end of fresh air, especially in winter, and a brilliant prospect up and down the street and over the roofs of the houses across the way, which reached from the Pantheon on the one side, to the peaked roofs and factory-like chimneys of the Tuileries on the other, the dome of the Hotel des Invalides occupying the centre of the picture.  I was studying painting