I love these sons of earth every mother's son of them, with their
great hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from spectacle
to spectacle, as if fearful lest there should not be time between
sun and sun to see them all, and the sun does not wait more than
in haying-time.
"Wise Nature's darlings, they live in the world
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled."
Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse pastimes
of the day, now with boisterous speed at the heels of the
inspired negro from whose larynx the melodies of all Congo and
Guinea Coast have broke loose into our streets; now to see the
procession of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as august and grave as
Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and milch cows as unspotted
as Isis or Io. Such as had no love for Nature
"at all,
Came lovers home from this great festival."
They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the
fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are
stirring autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the
rustle of leaves, like migrating finches; this is the true
harvest of the year, when the air is but the breath of men, and
the rustling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd.
