And the story, too, explained to me one reason why
people always choose to look at those trees rather than the houses: at
any trees before any houses. Because, you see, whatever grows out of
Nature is itself, and says so: has its own especial little soul-sap, and
leafs that out intact, borrows no trait or trick or habit from its
neighbor. The sunshine is sunshine, and the pine-burr a pine-burr,
obstinately, through and through. So Nature rests us. But whatever grows
out of a man's brain is like the brain, patched, uncertain: a perverse
streak in it somewhere, to spoil its thorough good or ill meaning.
There is a little Grecian temple yonder, back of the evergreens, with a
triangular stove-funnel revolving at its top; and next door a
Dutch-built stable, with a Turk's turban for a cupola; and just beyond
that, a _chalet_-roof, sprouting without any provocation whatever out of
an engine-house. I do not think they are caricatures of some characters.
I knew a politician once, very low down in even that scale; Quilp they
nicknamed him; the cruelest husband; quarter-dollarish in his views and
principles, and greedy for bribes even as low as that: yet I have seen
that man work with a rose-bush as long and tenderly as a mother with her
baby, and his eyes glow and grow wet at the sight of a new and delicate
plant.
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