Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/118

110 excited a burst of hilarity, which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the great book where he found the fact about the little snapping-turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he has told me have suggested several odd analogies enough.

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready to be laid in the form of books as yet; some of them are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they are; and these are what must form the future. A man's general notions are not good for much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as they exist in the minds of others. One must be in the habit of talking with such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of thought; for their development is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded on new patterns, which must be long and closely studied. But these are the men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a book.

A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow,—said one of the company.

I proceeded in spite of the interruption.—All uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is of the nature of an excretion. Its materials have been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its office in one mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. It may be milk or venom to other minds; but, in either case, it is something which the producer has had the use of and can part with. A man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or in print so soon as it is matured; but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his intellect.

Where are the brains that are fullest of these ovarian eggs of thought?—I decline mentioning individuals. The producers of thought, who are few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed up in the popular apprehension, that it would be hopeless to try to separate them before opinion has had time to settle. Follow the course of opinion on the great subjects of human interest for a few generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of its movement, see where it tends, and then see who is in advance of it or even with it; the world calls him hard names probably; but if you would find the man of the future, you must look into the folds of his cerebral convolutions.

[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr-burning and witch-hanging;—but time will show,—time will show, as the old gentleman opposite says.]

Oh,—here is that copy of verses I told you about.

The sunbeams, lost for half a year,
 * Slant through my pane their morning rays;

For dry Northwesters cold and clear,
 * The East blows in its thin blue haze.

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
 * Then close against the sheltering wall

The tulip's horn of dusky green,
 * The peony's dark unfolding ball.

The golden-chaliced crocus burns;
 * The long narcissus-blades appear;

The cone-beaked hyacinth returns,
 * And lights her blue-flamed chandelier.

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung
 * By the wild winds of gusty March,

With sallow leaflets lightly strung,
 * Are swaying by the tufted larch.

The elms have robed their slender spray
 * With full-blown flower and embryo leaf;

Wide o'er the clasping arch of day
 * Soars like a cloud their hoary chief.

[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup,
 * That flames in glory for an hour,—

Behold it withering,—then look up,—
 * How meek the forest-monarch's flower!—