After all, it is next to nothing we are able to tell of the pleasures of such fellowship. We cannot define them to ourselves,--though they are "felt in the blood and felt along the heart,"--much less to another. Least of all need we attempt to explain them to any Philistine; the walls of whose house are likely enough hung with "chromos," but who stares at you for a fool or a sentimentalist (which comes, perhaps, to nearly the same thing), when he catches you standing still before one of Nature's pictures. How shall one blest with a feeling for the woods put into language the delight he experiences in sauntering along their shady aisles? He enjoys the stillness, the sense of seclusion, the flicker of sunlight and shadow, the rustle of leaves, the insect's hum, the passing of the chance butterfly, the chirp of the bird, or its full-voiced song, the tracery of lichens on rock and tree, the tuft of ferns, the carpet of moss, the brightness of blossom and fruit,--all the numberless sights and sounds of the forest; but it is not any of these, nor all of them together, that make the glory of the place. It is the wood--and this is something more than the sum of all its parts--which lays hold upon him, taking him, as it were, out of the world and out of himself. Let practical people sneer, and the industrious frown; we who retain our relish for these natural and innocent felicities may well enough be indifferent to neighborly comments. Whatever worldlings may think, the hour is not wasted that brings with it tranquillity of mind and an uplifting of the heart. We seem to be going nowhere and looking for nothing? Yes; but one may be glad to visit the Land of Beulah, though he have no special errand thither. Who ever saw a child but was fond of an idle hour in the woods? And for my part, while, I have with me the children (and the dogs and the poets) I count myself in excellent company; for the time, at least, I can do without what is vulgarly esteemed good society. A man to whom a holiday affords no pleasure is already as good as dead; nothing will save him but to be born again. We have heard of convicts so wonted to prison cells that they could feel at home nowhere else; and we have known men of business whose feet, when they stopped going the regular humdrum round, knew no other course to take but to steer straight for the grave. It behooves us to heed the warning of such examples, and now and then to be idle betimes, lest the capacity for idleness be extirpated by disuse.