My mother
often tells me I was born to be a poor man's wife, I have such an
aptitude for all trades."
. . . Is not June the crown of the year, the Carnival of Nature, when
the very trees pelt each other with blossoms, and are stirring and
bending when no wind is near them, because they are so full of inward
life, and must shiver for joy to feel how fast the sap is rushing up
from the ground? On such days can you sing anything but, "Oh,
beautiful Love"? Doesn't it seem as if Nature wore your livery and
wished to show the joy of your heart in every possible form? The
everlasting hum and seething of myriad life satisfies and soothes me.
I feel as if something were going on in the world, else why all this
shouting, and bedecking of every weed in its best, this endless strain
from every tiny weed or great oaken flute? All that cannot sing,
dances; the gnats in the air and the long-legged spiders on the water.
Even the ants and beetles, the workers that are quoted for examples by
hoarding men, run about doing nothing, putting their busy antennae
into everything, tumbling over the brown mould for sheer enjoyment,
and running home at last without the little white paper parcel in
their mouths which gives them so respectable an air. Doubtless the
poor things are scolded by their infirm parents, who sit sunning
themselves at the door of the house. . . . Beetles seem to me to have
a pleasant life, because they, who have fed for two or three years
underground upon the roots, come forth at last winged, and find their
nourishment in the blooms of the very same tree.
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