We live like a tree with the whole strength of the universe. The globe-trotter lives in a smaller world than the peasant. He is always breathing, an air of locality. But Timbuctoo is not a place, since there, at least, live men who regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality, but the winds of the world. In this there is certainly danger.
Fertile things are somewhat heavier, like the heavy fruit trees on the pregnant mud of the Nile.
In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right. The moss is silent because the moss is alive. The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller. The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller.