A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.. William Bartlett

by the regenerating power, not of a new truth, but of an old one dug out of the rubbish, and freshly applied to the conscience of the world. How many truths to-day lie buried, which, if dug up, would set the world in an uproar! The image-breaker often heralds a revolution. He overturns the idol, of whatever sort it is, letting the light into some consecrated falsehood – not gently, but very rudely, and with a shocking disregard of good manners, as many affirm. This rough-shod evangel, with the rasping voice, and angular features, and pungent words – we neither like him nor his new gospel at first. But he improves on acquaintance, and some day we begin to doubt whether he really does deserve eternal burning.

      The world is full of cant; it infects our common speech. The odor of sanctity and the form of sound words are no nearer the living spirit than are those petrifactions which present an outline of men, but never again pulsate with life. Once in every half a century it is needful that the image-breaker should come along and knock on the head the brainless images of cant. The sturdy man of truthful and resolute speech! How irreverent and impious he is! He makes the timid hold their breath, lest he should break something that he ought not to touch. What has he done, after all, but to teach men and women to be more truthful, more courageous, and less in love with shams.

      At the close of a little "exhortation," something like this, the old man said – rather dogmatically, I thought – "Stranger, them sentiments of yourn won't do for this settlement." No doubt he was right. They won't do for any settlement where they build mud-and-stick chimneys on the outside of houses, and fry meat within.

      It is good to get into a forest where there is not a mark of the woodman's axe. The redwood is, after all, one of the handsomest coniferous trees in the world. It grows only in a good soil and a moist climate. There may be larger trees of the sequoia family in the Calaveras group, but that presumption will bear questioning. A guide offered to take us to a group of trees, distant about a day's ride, the largest of which he affirmed was seventy-five feet in circumference, and not less than two hundred and sixty feet high. Larger trees than this are reported in the Coast Range; but we have never yet seen a redwood which measured over fifty feet in circumference, nor can any considerable tree of this species be found beyond the region of sandstone and the belt of coast fogs.

      It is curious to note tree and tribal limitations. The oak and the redwood do not associate together, but the madrono is the friend of both. The line of redwood limits the habitation of the ground squirrel, and within that line his half-brother, the wood squirrel, arches his tail in the overhanging boughs, and barks just when the charge is out of your gun, with surprising impudence. There is the dominion of trees and animals older and better defined than any law of boundaries which has yet got into our statute-books. Who knows but races of men have overleaped boundaries of Divine ordination, and so must struggle with adverse fate towards nothing more hopeful than extinction. The black man of the tropics, planted near the North Pole, has all the grin taken out of him, and there is nothing but a frigid chatter left. There is the Indian of the great central plains. Have we got into his country, or has he got into ours? There is some confusion of boundaries; and the locomotive, that demon of modern civilization, is tracing new boundaries with a trail of fire. It is possible to put one's finger upon the weak link in the logic that what is bad for the Indian is good for the white man.

      That gopher snake just passed on the trail, with a young rabbit half swallowed, illustrates near enough how one-half of the world is trying to swallow the other. Observe, too, that provision of nature, by which game is swallowed larger than the throat. It is the smallest half of the world, it seems, that is trying to swallow the largest half, with good prospect of success. Half a dozen men have located all the redwood timber upon the accessible streams of this county. Looking coastward along the Novarro, there is a chain of townships spanning this stream for fifteen miles in length, owned by two men. You may write down the names of twenty men who are at this moment planning to swallow all the leading business interests of this State. They will elect Governors and Legislators. It don't matter that the game is larger than the throat. In fact, deglutition is already pretty well advanced – as far, at least, as with the rabbit; but with this difference, that our victims will be made to grease themselves.