The same long afterward, casually,
to a paper--I think it was call'd the "Jimplecute"--out in Colorado
where I stopp'd at the time. When I was in Quebec province, in Canada,
in 1880, I went into the queerest little old French printing-office
near Tadousac. It was far more primitive and ancient than my Camden
friend William Kurtz's place up on Federal street. I remember, as a
youngster, several characteristic old printers of a kind hard to be
seen these days.
THE GREAT UNREST OF WHICH WE ARE PART
My thoughts went floating on vast and mystic currents as I sat to-day
in solitude and half-shade by the creek--returning mainly to two
principal centres. One of my cherish'd themes for a never-achiev'd
poem has been the two impetuses of man and the universe--in the
latter, creation's incessant unrest,[19] exfoliation, (Darwin's
evolution, I suppose.) Indeed, what is Nature but change, in all its
visible, and still more its invisible processes? Or what is humanity
in its faith, love, heroism, poetry, even morals, but _emotion_?
Note:
[19] "Fifty thousand years ago the constellation of the Great Bear
or Dipper was a starry cross; a hundred thousand years hence the
imaginary Dipper will be upside down, and the stars which form the
bowl and handle will have changed places. The misty nebulae are
moving, and besides are whirling around in great spirals, some one
way, some another. Every molecule of matter in the whole universe is
swinging to and fro; every particle of ether which fills space is
in jelly-like vibration.
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