The Portland daily press., 1879-11-29
TERMS $500 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE.

among gentians. There is nothing like it re-
corded. 1t is the Only One, like Jean Paul IL
is what Achilles was among heroes, or Helen
among beautiful women. The precise number
was one hundred and thirty-six, and all other
alleged numbers are fables. When Bryant,
the poet of the gentian, and familiar with it as
he was with all plants and flowers of his hills,
was asked how many blossoms he had ever
seen upon single stalk, he answered, Per
haps twenty or thirty" He was man OF truth
and honor; but the precise number oil blossoms
OF the fringed flowers, open and partly open,
upon this memorial and unique stalk, worthy
to be raised to a constellation in the Northern
skies, was one hundred and thirty-six
All over the fields and high upon the hill
sides the stocks of corn are like Indian wig
vans AS the spectator looks off from some
convenient point upon the solitary landscape,
he will observe how fral hold the houses and
works of man seem to have upon it. Indeed,
it is not hard to eliminate them. and see the
country as the Indians saw it. Nature, too, IS
silently watching and waiting TO reclaim her
old sway. Here is q high-road, discontinued
two or three years since, and already the grass
and thicket have pressed in upon 1t, and tan
gled it so that it is quite impassaole. Nature
has thrown her web over it and caught it, and
will consume it and assimilate it at her leisure:
The distant hills are tawny with the dried
June-grass and the tnkling of cow-belIs IN the
high pastures on the STILL drowsy afternoon
fills the loiterer's mind with memories Oh
Switzerland, and he seems once more TO near
that long-slent music of the Alps, and pauseS
to catch the mufiled thunder of the avalanche
and the echoing rdlz deS cdcheS But he hears
only the dropping of nuts on the dry leaves,
aud smiles to see how neatly the touch OF Jack
Frost has opened the burr and revealed the
giistenlng Chestnut. 1t is a realm OF faery
and splendor and pensive memory through
which he walks and looking upon the scene
familiar to the poets eye and dear to his heart,
he recalls among Bryant's hills Bryants SON.
net:
"Yet one smile more. departing, distant sunl
One mellow smile through the soft vaPory air,
Fer o'er the frozen earth the loud winds run,
Or SHOWS are sifted or the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose Summer wreaths are
cast
Mods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet few sunny days in which the bee
Shall murmur by the he'd se that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russell lea.
And man delight to linger in thy ray
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
air."
Editors Easy Chair, in Harper's Magazine.
AMERICAN ovERwoRK.
One need not dwell upon the desirableness
of calm and seclusion for the production of the
best literature. With individuals, as with na-
tions, stirring periods of action are not favora-
BILE to ideaistc art. There is much unfairness-
however, in the blame to which public men
in this country are subjected for their over
work. This is rather a matter of necessity
than of choice. People in the old world large,
ly inherit their means and methods from their
forbears; new men, even there, often have tie
habit of overwork fixed upon them by the
time their footholds are secured But the
statesmen and thinkers of Europe start with
assured incomes more commonly than do our
own, and are not forced to earn their bread as
they go along. Our Wilson's, Evartses, Cur
tises, have had tn consider first the means Of
living, and to be statesmen or writers in addi-
ton. Our Eastern Brahmins, happily, have
had for the most part resources which they
have enlarged by the help of such gentle, schol-
arly pursuits as the service Of university al
fords. They have shown themselves quite
willing to indulge spirit of restfuness and
calm So long as Americans who do not in
herit estates have the Anglo-Saxon pride and
domestic tenderness they will be tempted to
do work elsewhere than in garret, and rarely
be able to drive from their minds the thought
of its effect upon an income-paying constitu-
ency.-E. c. Stedman in Scribner.