Semi-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1853-18??, 1858-07-21

Here is . picture of nature drawn with graphic
beauty and which forciby illustrates the stupid OBJ
stinacy Of those who cavi at the progressive march
of Science It is taken from the Atlantic Monthly,
and learn it is from the pen of Oliver w. Holmes,
alias
The AUToCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE
"Dd you never, in walking in the fields, come
across large fat stone, which had lain nobody
knows how long, just where you found it, with the
grass forming little hedge, as it were, all round it,
close to its edges, and have you not in obedience
to kind of feeling that told you it had been lying
there long enough nsnuated your stick or your foot
your fingers under its edge and turned it over as,
a housew life turns CAKE when she says to herself
"lts done brown enough by this time'Y What an
odd revelation and what unforeseen and unpleas-
ant surprise to a small community, the very exis-
tence OF which you had not suspected, until the sud-
den dismay and scattering among its members pro-
duced by your turning the old stone over! Blades
of grass hattened down, cooress, matted together,
as If they had been bleacbed and ironed, hideous
crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or
horney sheiled. Turtle bugs one wants to call them
some of them softer, but cunningIy spread out and
compressed like Lepne watches; Mature never osesa
crack crevce, mind you joint in tavern bed
stead but she always has one of her fat pattern live
time keepers to slide into IT'D black, glossy crickets
with their long haments sticking out like the whipsof
fourhorse stage coaches; molioness, slugike crea-
lures, larvae, perhaps, horrible in their PUPPY
stiffness than even in the internal wrigge OF matur-
ty! But is the stone turned and the whole
some light ofday let upon this compressed and blind
ed community Of creeping things, than all OF them
that enjoy the luxury Of legs-and some of them
have good many-rush round wildly, butting each
other and everything in their way, and end in gen.
era stampede for underground retreats from the
gion poisoned by sunshine. Nert gear you will find
the growing tall and green where the stone lays
the ground bird builds her nest where the beetle had
his hole; the dandeon and the buttercup are grow
ing there and the broad fans of insect angels open and
shut over their golden disks, the rhythmic waves
of bssul CONSCIOUSNESS pulsate through their gori
fled being.
- The young fellow whom they call ohn
fit to say, in his very familiar way,-at which do
not choose to take offence, but which l sometimes
think it necessary to repress,-that was coming it
rather strong on the butterflies.
No, replied; there is meaning in each of those
images,-the butterfly as well the others. The
store is ancient error. The grass is human nature
borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The
shapes that are found beneath the crafty beings
that thrive in darkness and the weaker kept
helpless by it. He who turns the stone is what
puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus,
matter whether he do it with a serious face a
laughing one. The next year stands for the coming
time Then shall the nature which had lain blanch-
ed and broken rise in its full and native hu"s
in the sunshine. Then shall Gods MINISTRIES build
their nests in the hearts of newborn humanity
Then shall beauty-Divinty taking outlines and
color-light upon the souls of men the butterfly,
image of the beatifed spirit rising from the dust,
scars from the shell that held poor grub, which
would never have found WINGS had not the stone
been lifted"