Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/141

Rh with sufficient accuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend. Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate. But will the government never be so well administered, inquired one, that we private men shall hear nothing about it?" The king answered; At all events, I require a prudent and able man, who is capable of managing the state affairs of my kingdom. The ex-minister said, The criterion, O Sire! of a wise and competent man, is, that he will not meddle with such like matters." Alas, that the ex-minister should have been so nearly right.

In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead. It is grateful to make one's way through this latest generation as through dewy grass. Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious.—

Not being Reve of this Shire,

thieves and robbers all nevertheless. I have not so surely foreseen that any Cossack or Chippeway would come to