Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1858-03-20
HUNKERISM.

did you never, in walking in the fields. come
across large flat stone, which had lain, nobody
knows how long, just where YOU found it, with
the grass forming II little hedge, as il were all
round il close to its edges, and have YOU not, in
obedience TO a kind feeling that told you it had
been lying there long enough, insinuated your
stick or Your foot or your fingers under its edge
and turned II over housewife turns a cake
when she SAYS to herself Its done brown enough
by this time?" What an odd revelation and
what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to Il
small community, the very existence of which
you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay
and scattering among its members produced by
your turning the old stone over Blades of grass
ilattened down, colorless. matted together, as if
they had been bleached and ironed hideous
crawling creatures, some of them coleoptcrous
or horny -shclled, turtle bugs one wants to call
them; some of them softer. but cunninglv spread
out and compressed like Lepine watches INA
ture never loses crack or n crevice mind YOU,
or joint in tavern bed-stead, but she always
has one of her fiat-pattern live time-keepers to
slide into it y black. glossy crickets with their
long flaments sticking out like the whips of
four-horse stage coaches; motionless, slug like
creatures. larvP, perhaps, more horrible in their
pulpy stiffness than even in the Internal wriggle
of maturity But no sooner is the stone turn
ed and the whoesoms light of day let upon this
compressed and blinded community of creeping
things. than all ofthem that enjoy the luxury of
legs-and some of them have good many
rush round wildly, butting each other and every
thing in their way, and end in general stmpede
for underground retreats from the region pois-
oncd by sunshine .Nect year YOU will find the
grass growing tall and green where the stone
LAYS the ground bird builds her nest where the
beetle had his hole the danaelion and the but
tercup are growing there, and the broad fans of
insect angels open and shut over their golden
disks, as the rythmic waves of blissfu conscious
ness pulsate through their glorifed being.
"-The young fellow whom they call John
saw fit to say in his very familiar way,-at which
| do not choose to take offence but which
sometimes think it necessary to repress,-that
l was coming it rather strong on the butterflies.
mo, replied; there is meaning in each of
those images,-the butterfly as well as the 9TH
ers. The stone is ancient error The grass is
human nature borne down and bleached of all
its color by it. The shapes that are found be-
meath are the crafty beings that thrive in dark
ness, and the weaker organisms kept helpless
by it, lie who turns the stone over is whose
ever puts the staff of truth TO the old lying in
cubus, no matter wether he do it with a serious
face or laughing one. The next year stands
for the coming time. Then shall the nature
which had lain blanched and broken rise in its
full stature and native hues in the sunshine
Then shall Gods minstrels build their nests in
the heats of a newborn humanity. Then shall
beauty-Divinity taking outlines and color
light upon the souls of men as the butterfly i'm
age of the beatfied spirit rising from the dust
starts from the shell that held a poor grub, which
would never have found wings, had not the stone
been lifted.
"You never need think you can turn over any
old falsehood without terrible squirmng and
scattering of the horrid little population that
dwells under it."-Dr Holmes.