And ’tis well, if they are but half as good. To me, the discovery of a woodman in the wadi were as pleasing as the discovery of a woodchuck or a woodswallow or a woodbine. For in the soul of the woodman is a song, I muse, as sweet as the rhythmic strains of the goldfinch, if it could be evoked.
But the soul plodding up the hill under its heavy overshadowing burden, what breath has it left for song? The man bowed beneath the load, the soul bowed beneath the man! Alas, I seem to behold but moving burdens in my country.
And yet, my swarthy and shrunken, but firm-fibred people plod along, content, patient, meek; and when they reach the summit of the hill with their crushing burdens, they still have breath enough to troll a favourite ditty or serenade the night.
‘I come to thee, O Night, I’m at thy feet; I can not see, O Night, But thy breath is sweet.’
“And so is the breath of the pines. Here, the air is surcharged with perfume. In it floats the aromatic soul of many a flower. But the perfume-soul of the pines seems to tower over all others, just as its material shape lifts its artistic head over the oak, the cercis, and the terabinth.
And though tall and stately, my native pines are not forbidding. They are so pruned that the snags serve as a most convenient ladder. Such was my pleasure mounting for the green cones, the salted piñons of which are delicious. But I confess they seem to stick in the stomach as the pitch of the cones sticks on the hands. This, however, though it remains for days, works no evil; but the piñons in the stomach, and the stomach on the nerves—that is a different question.
“The only pines I have seen in the United States are those in front of Emerson’s house in Concord; but compared with my native trees, they