Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/272

This page has been validated.
258
EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

his bones. They would not prove any art that wielded them, such as this work of his bones does. It is humanity inscribed on the face of the earth, patent to my eyes as soon as the snow is off, not hidden away in some crypt or grave, or under a pyramid. No disgusting mummy, but a clean stone, the best symbol or letter that could have been transmitted to me. The red man, his mark! Arrowhead in ThoreauAt every step I see it. . . . . It is no single inscription on a particular rock, but a footprint or rather a mindprint left everywhere and altogether illegible. No Vandals, however vandalic in their disposition, can be so industrious as to destroy them. . . . . They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind that shaped them. I would fain know that I am treading in the tracks of human game, that I am on the trail of mind. . . . . When I see these signs I know that the subtle spirits that made them are not far off, into whatever form transmuted. What if you do plow and hoe amid them, and swear that not one stone shall be left upon another, they are only the less likely to break in that case. When you turn up one layer you bury another so much the more securely. They are at peace with rust. This arrow-headed character promises to outlast all others. The larger