---_Emerson_.
22. Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across a large flat
stone, which had lain, nobody knows how long, just where you found it,
with the grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close
to its edges; and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that
told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or
your foot or your fingers under its edge, and turned it over as a
housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown
enough by this time"? But no sooner is the stone turned and the
wholesome light of day let upon this compressed and blinded community
of creeping things than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs--and
some of them have a good many--rush round wildly, butting each other
and everything in their way, and end in a general stampede for
underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next year
you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the
ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the
dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of
insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic
waves of blissful consciousness pulsate through their glorified
being.
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