Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/184

174 there. It defiled all it touched. The next morning the hollow stem was left perfectly bare, and only the hoary apex of the cone, spreading about two inches in diameter, lay on the ground beneath. Probably one night produced it, and in one day, with all our pains, it wasted away. Is it not a giant mildew or mould? In the warm, muggy night the surface of the earth is mildewed. The mould which is the flower of humid darkness and ignorance. The pyramids and other monuments of Egypt are a vast mildew or toad-stool which have met with no light of day sufficient to waste them away. Slavery is such a mould and superstition which are most rank in the warm and humid portions of the globe. Luxor sprang up one night out of the slime of the Nile. The humblest, puniest weed that can endure the sun is thus superior to the largest fungus, as is the peasant s cabin to those foul temples. All things flower, both vices and virtues, but one is essentially foul, an other fair. In hell, toad-stools should be represented as overshadowing men. The priest is the fungus of the graveyard, of the tomb. In the animal world there are toads and lizards.

To Island by boat.

The first white lily to-day perhaps. It is the only bud I have seen. The river has gone down and left it nearly dry. On the Island, where a