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小说: 17-spring 字数: 每页4000字

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shore; and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water; with a muddy

bottom; such as the ducks love; within; and he thought it likely

that some would be along pretty soon。  After he had lain still there

about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound; but

singularly grand and impressive; unlike anything he had ever heard;

gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal

and memorable ending; a sullen rush and roar; which seemed to him

all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to

settle there; and; seizing his gun; he started up in haste and

excited; but he found; to his surprise; that the whole body of the

ice had started while he lay there; and drifted in to the shore; and

the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore 

at first gently nibbled and crumbled off; but at length heaving up

and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height

before it came to a standstill。

    At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle; and warm

winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks; and the sun;

dispersing the mist; smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and

white smoking with incense; through which the traveller picks his

way from islet to islet; cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling

rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter

which they are bearing off。

    Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms

which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a

deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the

village; a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale; though

the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have

been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented。  The material

was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors;

commonly mixed with a little clay。  When the frost comes out in the

spring; and even in a thawing day in the winter; the sand begins to

flow down the slopes like lava; sometimes bursting out through the

snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before。

Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another;

exhibiting a sort of hybrid product; which obeys half way the law of

currents; and half way that of vegetation。  As it flows it takes the

forms of sappy leaves or vines; making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot

or more in depth; and resembling; as you look down on them; the

laciniated; lobed; and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you

are reminded of coral; of leopard's paws or birds' feet; of brains

or lungs or bowels; and excrements of all kinds。  It is a truly

grotesque vegetation; whose forms and color we see imitated in

bronze; a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical

than acanthus; chiccory; ivy; vine; or any vegetable leaves;

destined perhaps; under some circumstances; to become a puzzle to

future geologists。  The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave

with its stalactites laid open to the light。  The various shades of

the sand are singularly rich and agreeable; embracing the different

iron colors; brown; gray; yellowish; and reddish。  When the flowing

mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out

flatter into strands; the separate streams losing their

semi…cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad;

running together as they are more moist; till they form an almost

flat sand; still variously and beautifully shaded; but in which you

can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length; in the

water itself; they are converted into banks; like those formed off

the mouths of rivers; and the forms of vegetation are lost in the

ripple marks on the bottom。

    The whole bank; which is from twenty to forty feet high; is

sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage; or sandy

rupture; for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides; the produce

of one spring day。  What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its

springing into existence thus suddenly。  When I see on the one side

the inert bank  for the sun acts on one side first  and on the

other this luxuriant foliage; the creation of an hour; I am affected

as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist

who made the world and me  had come to where he was still at work;

sporting on this bank; and with excess of energy strewing his fresh

designs about。  I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the

globe; for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass

as the vitals of the animal body。  You find thus in the very sands

an anticipation of the vegetable leaf。  No wonder that the earth

expresses itself outwardly in leaves; it so labors with the idea

inwardly。  The atoms have already learned this law; and are pregnant

by it。  The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype。  Internally;

whether in the globe or animal body; it is a moist thick lobe; a

word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of

fat (jnai; labor; lapsus; to flow or slip downward; a lapsing;

jiais; globus; lobe; globe; also lap; flap; and many other words);

externally a dry thin leaf; even as the f and v are a pressed and

dried b。  The radicals of lobe are lb; the soft mass of the b

(single lobed; or B; double lobed); with the liquid l behind it

pressing it forward。  In globe; glb; the guttural g adds to the

meaning the capacity of the throat。  The feathers and wings of birds

are still drier and thinner leaves。  Thus; also; you pass from the

lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly。  The

very globe continually transcends and translates itself; and becomes

winged in its orbit。  Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves;

as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of waterplants have

impressed on the watery mirror。  The whole tree itself is but one

leaf; and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening

earth; and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils。

    When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow; but in the

morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again

into a myriad of others。  You here see perchance how blood…vessels

are formed。  If you look closely you observe that first there pushes

forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a

drop…like point; like the ball of the finger; feeling its way slowly

and blindly downward; until at last with more heat and moisture; as

the sun gets higher; the most fluid portion; in its effort to obey

the law to which the most inert also yields; separates from the

latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within

that; in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like

lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another; and

ever and anon swallowed up in the sand。  It is wonderful how rapidly

yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows; using the best

material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel。

Such are the sources of rivers。  In the silicious matter which the

water deposits is perhaps the bony system; and in the still finer

soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue。  What

is man but a mass of thawing clay?  The ball of the human finger is

but a drop congealed。  The fingers and toes flow to their extent

from the thawing mass of the body。  Who knows what the human body

would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?  Is not the

hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins?  The ear may be

regarded; fancifully; as a lichen; umbilicaria; on the side of the

head; with its lobe or drop。  The lip  labium; from labor (?) 

laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth。  The nose is a

manifest congealed drop or stalactite。  The chin is a still larger

drop; the confluent dripping of the face。  The cheeks are a slide

from the brows into the valley of the face; opposed and diffused by

the cheek bones。  Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf; too; is a

thick and now loitering drop; larger or smaller; the lobes are the

fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has; in so many

directions it tends to flow; and more heat or other genial

influences would have caused it to flow yet farther。

    Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle

of all the operations of Nature。  The Maker of this earth but

patented a leaf。  What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic

for us; that we may turn over a new leaf at last?  This phenomenon

is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of

vineyards。  True; it is somewhat excrementitious in its character;

and there is no end to the heaps of liver; lights; and bowels; as if

the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least

that Nature has some bowels; and there again is mother of humanity。

This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring。  It

precede

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