Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/49

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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.
35

and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness, I am sure to be filled.

March 2, 1840. Love is the burden of all nature's odes, the song of the birds is an epithalamium, a hymeneal. The marriage of the flowers spots the meadows and fringes the hedges with pearls and diamonds. In the deep water, in the high air, in woods and pastures, and the bowels of the earth, this is the employment and condition of all things.

March 2, 1852. If the sciences are protected from being carried by assault by a palisade or chevaux-de-frise of technical terms, so also the learned man may ensconce himself, and conceal his little true knowledge behind hard names. Perhaps the value of any statement may be increased by its susceptibility of being expressed in popular language. The greatest discoveries can be reported in the newspapers. I thought it was a great advantage both to speakers and hearers, when, at the meetings of scientific gentlemen at the Marlborough Chapel, the representatives of one department of science were required to speak intelligibly to those of other departments; therefore dispensing with the most peculiarly technical terms. A man may be permitted to state a very meagre truth to a fellow-student using technical terms, but when he stands up before the mass of men he