bed, and this broken dish held his drink. But he has not been here
this season, for the phoebes built their nest upon this shelf last
summer. I find some embers left, as if he had but just gone out, where
he baked his pot of beans; and while at evening he smoked his pipe,
whose stemless bowl lies in the ashes, chatted with his only companion,
if perchance he had any, about the depth of the snow on the morrow,
already falling fast and thick without, or disputed whether the last
sound was the screech of an owl or the creak of a bough, or imagination
only; and through this broad chimney-throat, in the late winter
evening, ere he stretched himself upon the straw, he looked up to learn
the progress of the storm, and, seeing the bright stars of Cassiopeia's
chair shining brightly down upon him, fell contentedly asleep.

See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper's history.
From this stump we may guess the sharpness of his ax, and from the
slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, and whether he cut down
the tree without going round it or changing hands; and from the flexure
of the splinters, we may know which way it fell. This one chip
contains inscribed on it the whole history of the wood-chopper and of
the world. On this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt
perchance, or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the
forest, with what interest we read the tattle of cities, of those
larger huts, empty and to let, like this, in High Streets and Broadways.




WALT WHITMAN.

THE MIRACLES OF NATURE.