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264 and ponds. So they go anxious and earnest to hide their nests under the pole. The gulls, more used to boats and sails, will often fly quite near without manifesting alarm.

March 29 and 30, 1842. Though nature's laws are more immutable than any despot's, they rarely seem rigid, but relax with license in summer weather. We are not often nor harshly reminded of the things we may not do. I am often astonished to see how long and with what manifest infringement of the natural laws some men I meet in the highway maintain life. Nature does not deny them quarter. They do not die without priest. All the while she rejoices, for if they are not one part of her, they are another.

I am convinced that consistency is the secret of health. How many a poor man, striving to live a pure life, pines and dies after a life of sickness, and his successors doubt if nature is not pitiless, while the confirmed and consistent sot who is content with his rank life like mushrooms, a mass of corruption, still dozes comfortably under a hedge. He has made his peace with himself; there is no strife. Nature is really very kind and liberal to all persons of vicious habits. They take great licenses with her. She does not exhaust them with many excesses.