ied by his generation,
and he should 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may aid in
illuminating the darkness of the present, and he should therefore
'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may have some influence in
building up and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should
therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks,' regardless of the
contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them.
What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the
sensual, the profligate, the unreflecting fools of the world be poured
upon him? What of that? To-day, may be one of darkness and storm. The
cloud and the storm will pass away, and the brightness and glory of
the sunlight will be all over the earth to-morrow. Let him 'speak his
opinions then of to-day in words hard as rocks, and his opinions of
to-morrow in words just as hard.' Let him speak his opinions thus on
all subjects within the range of human investigation, upon science,
philosophy, politics, religion, morals; and leave to little minds to
settle the question of consistency or change. Let his be the eagle's
flight towards the sun, and theirs to skim in darkness along the
ground, like the course of the mousing owl."

After it became dark, Smith and Martin went out around the lake night
hunting, and the rest retired to our tents. We heard the report of
Smith's rifle from time to time, and concluded that we should have to
court-martial him for a wanton destruction of deer, contrary to the
law we had established for our government on that subject. But on his
return, we ascertained that, though having had several shots, he had
succeeded in killing or, according to Martin's account, even wounding
but one, and that a yearling, and the poorest and leanest we had seen
since we entered the woods. Though it was thus diminutive in size,
Smith declared that he had seen, and shot at, some of the largest deer
that ever roamed the forest. He insisted that he had seen some, by the
side of which the largest we had looked upon by daylight, were mere
fawns, and thereupon he undertook to establish a theory that the large
deer fed by night and the smaller ones by day. This would have been
all well enough, were it not for the fact, understood by every
experienced night-hunter, that by the spectral and uncertain light of
the lamp, or torch, a deer, when seen standing in the water, or on the
reedy banks, is in appearance magnified to twice its actual
di