Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/74

60 the snow. The snow is melting on the rocks, the water trickles down in shining streams, the mosses look bright; the first awakening of vegetation is at the root of the saxifrage. As I go by the farmer's yard the hens cackle more solidly, as if eggs were the burden of the strain.

A horse's fore legs are handier than his hind ones, the latter but fall into the place which the former have found. They have the advantage of being nearer the head, the source of intelligence. He strikes and paws with them. It is true he kicks with the hind legs. But that is a very simple and unscientific action, as if his whole body were a whip lash and his heels the snapper.

The constant reference in our lives, even in the most trivial matters, to the superhuman is wonderful. If a portrait is painted, neither the wife's opinion of the husband, nor the husband's opinion of the wife, nor either's opinion of the artist, not man's opinion of man, is final and satisfactory. Man is not the final judge of the humblest work, though it be piling wood. The queen and the chambermaid, the king and the hired man, the Indian and the slave, alike appeal to God.

Each man's mode of speaking of the sexual relation proves how sacred his own relations of that kind are. We do not respect the mind that can jest on this subject.