built their nest upon this shelf last summer.  I find some embers left, as if he had but just gone out, where he baked his pot of beans; and while at evening he smoked his pipe, whose stemless bowl lies in the ashes, chatted with his only companion, if perchance he had any, about the depth of the snow on the morrow, already falling fast and thick without, or disputed whether the last sound was the screech of an owl or the creak of a bough, or imagination only; and through this broad chimney-throat, in the late winter evening, ere he stretched himself upon the straw, he looked up to learn the progress of the storm, and, seeing the bright stars of Cassiopeia’s chair shining brightly down upon him, fell contentedly asleep.

See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper’s history.  From this stump we may guess the sharpness of his ax, and from the slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, and whether he cut down the tree without going round it or changing hands; and from the flexure of the splinters, we may know which way it fell.  This one chip contains inscribed on it the whole history of the wood-chopper and of the world.  On this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt perchance, or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the forest, with what interest we read the tattle of cities, of those larger huts, empty and to let, like this, in High Streets and Broadways.

  WALT WHITMAN.

  THE MIRACLES OF NATURE.

  [From Leaves of Grass.]

  To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
  Every inch of space is a miracle,
  Every square yard of the surface of the earth
        is spread with the same,
  Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same.

* * * * * * * *

  To me the sea is a continual miracle,
  The fishes that swim—­the rocks—­the motion
        of the waves—­the ships with men in them,
  What stranger miracles are there?

* * * * * * * *

  I was thinking the day most splendid,
        till I saw what the not-day exhibited;
  I was thinking this globe enough,
        till there tumbled upon me myriads of other globes;
  O, how plainly I see now that this life cannot exhibit
        all to me—­as the day cannot;
  O, I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

* * * * * * * *

  O Death! 
  O, the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing
        a few moments, for reasons.

* * * * * * * *

  The earth never tires,
  The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first—­
  Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first;
  Be not discouraged—­keep on—­there are divine things,
        well enveloped;
  I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful
        than words can tell.