Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/24

10 book helps the sun shine in my chamber. The rays fall on its page as if to explain and illustrate it. I, who have been sick, hear cattle low in the street with such a healthy ear as prophesies my cure. These sounds lay a finger on my pulse to some purpose. A fragrance comes in at all my senses which proclaims that I am still of nature, the child. The threshing in yonder barn, and the tinkling of the anvil come from the same side of Styx with me. If I were a physician I would try my patients thus: I would wheel them to a window and let nature feel their pulses. It will soon appear if their sensuous existence is sound. These sounds are but the throbbing of some pulse in me. Nature seems to have given me these hours to pry into her private drawers. I watch the insensible perspiration rising from my coat or hand on the wall. I go and feel my pulse in all the recesses of the house, and see if I am of force to carry a homely life and comfort into them.

February 26, 1852. We are told to-day that civilization is making rapid progress; the tendency is ever upward, substantial justice is done even by human courts. You may trust the good intentions of mankind. We read to-morrow in the newspapers that France is on the eve of going to war with England to give employment