f any
service. Icebergs float down against its surface-current, and fill
all the New-England air with the chill of death till June: after that
the fogs drift down from Newfoundland. There never was such a
mockery as this Gulf Stream. It is like the English influence on
France, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg.
Still New England survives. To what purpose? I say, as an example:
the politician says, to produce "Poor Boys." Bah! The poor boy is
an anachronism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is not
a boy. In Tartary they would hang him for sucking all the asses'
milk that belongs to the children: in New England he has all the
cream from the Public Cow. What can you expect in a country where
one knows not today what the weather will be tomorrow? Climate makes
the man. Suppose he, too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he
has all climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he will become the
prophet, the seer, of his age, as he is its Poet. The New-Englander
is the man without a climate. Why is his country recognized? You
won't find it on any map of Paris.
And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomaly! The greater must
include the less; but how if the less leaks out? This sometimes
happens.
And yet there are phenomena in that country worth observing. One of
them is the conduct of Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st of
June, or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the summer
solstice. As Tourmalain remarked, "You'd better observe the
unpleasant than to be blind." This was in 802. Tourmalain is dead;
so is Gross Alain; so is little Pee-Wee: we shall all be dead before
things get any better.
That is the law. Without revolution there is nothing. What is
revolution? It is turning society over, and putting the best
underground for a fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. What has
this to do with New England? In the language of that flash of social
lightning, Beranger, "May the Devil fly away with me if I can see!"
Let us speak of the period in the year in New England when winter
appears to hesitate. Except in the calendar, the action is ironical;
but it is still deceptive. The sun mounts high: it is above the
horizon twelve hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks away in
liquid repentance. One morning it is gone, except in shaded spots
and close by the fences. From about the trunks of the trees it has
long departed: the tree is a living thing, and its growth repels it.
The fence is dead, driven
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