Forever! 'Tis a single word!
And yet our fathers deem'd it two:
Nor am I confident they err'd;
Are you?
OPEN AIR
[Sidenote: _Thoreau_]
My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give
me the ocean, the desert or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and
solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveller
Burton says of it: "Your _morale_ improves; you become frank and
cordial, hospitable and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous
liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal
existence." They who have been travelling long on the steppes of Tartary
say: "On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and
turmoil of civilisation oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to
fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia." When
I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most
interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as
a sacred place--a _sanctum sanctorum_. There is the strength, the marrow
of Nature. The wild-wood covers the virgin mould--and the same soil is
good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of
meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are the
strong meats on which he feeds.
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