Remorse of Wasting Time :)

Emerson: Concord Walks

The place where a thoughtful man in the country feels the joy of eminent domain is in his wood-lot. If he suffer from accident or low spirits, his spirits rise when he enters it. He can spend the entire day therein, with hatchet or pruning-shears, making paths, without remorse of wasting time. He can fancy that the birds know him and trust him, and even the trees make little speeches or hint them. Then be remembers that Allah in his allotment of life "does not count the time which the Arab spends in the chase."


I admire in trees the creation of property so clean of tears, or mute, or even care. No lesson of chemistry is more impressive to me than this chemical fact that "Nineteen twentieths of the timber are drawn from the atmosphere." We knew the root was sucking juices from the ground. But the top of the tree is also a taproot thrust into the public pocket of the atmosphere. This is a highwayman, to be sure. And I am always glad to remember that in proportion to the foliation is the addition of wood. Then they grow, when you wake and when you sleep, at nobody's cost, and for everybody's comfort. Lord Abercorn, when some one praised the rapid growth of his trees, replied, "Sir, they have nothing else to do."