Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/95

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SUMMER.
85

relation between our life and its! . . . The seasons go by, to us, as if it were not. A beauty reared in the shade of a convent, who has never strayed beyond the convent bell. Only the skunk or owl, or other inhabitant of the swamp, beholds it. It does not pine because man does not admire it. I am inclined to think of it as a relic of the past, as much as the arrowhead or the tomahawk.

The air is now pretty full of shad flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for such as are struggling on the surface. It sounds like the lapsing of a swift stream sucking amid rocks. The fishes make a business of thus getting their evening meal, dimpling the river like large drops, as far as I can see, some times making a loud plashing. Meanwhile, the kingfishers are on the lookout for the fishes as they rise, and I saw one dive in the twilight and go off uttering his cr-r-ack-cr-r-rack.

Covered with disgrace, this State has sat down coolly, to try for their lives the men who at tempted to do its duty for it, and this is called justice! They who have shown that they can behave particularly well, they alone are put under bonds for their good behavior! It behoves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters. What is any political organization