Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/86

76 personally related to men, and begin to be universally related, then we are capable of inspiring others with the sentiment of love for us.

We hug the earth. How rarely we mount! How rarely we climb a tree! We might elevate ourselves. That pine would make us dizzy. You can see the mountains from it as you never did before.

Shall not a man have his spring as well as the plants?

Any reverence even for a material thing proceeds from an elevation of character. Layard, speaking of the reverence for the sun exhibited by the Yezidis, or Worshipers of the Devil, says, &quot;They are accustomed to kiss the object on which the sun's first beams fall; and I have frequently, when traveling in their company at sunrise, observed them perform this ceremony. For fire, as symbolic, they have nearly the same reverence; they never spit into it, but frequently pass their hands through the flame, kiss them, and pass them over their right eyebrow, or sometimes over the whole face.&quot;

Who taught the oven-bird to conceal her nest? It is on the ground, yet out of sight. What cunning there is in Nature! No man could have arranged it more artfully for the purpose of concealment. Only the escape of the bird betrays it.