My Winter Garden; A Nature-Lover Under Southern Skies
Maurice Thompson
Paperback
(TheClassics.us, Sept. 12, 2013)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... flDontaianc He puts his foot into heresies tenderly, as a cat in water, and pulls it out again, and still something unanswered delays him.--John Earle. GENIUS is the true fountain of youth. We who but touch it with finger-tips at utmost stretch feel its renewing thrill come to our centers of enjoyment, a sort of electrical shock from an exhaustless storage battery, centuries distant it may be, set in the world by divine wisdom or divine accident. Once or twice in an age comes a man or a woman who has this perennial gift, this ageless influence, and imbues a book with it. One of the bestendowed of these was Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne, who in 1580 gave to the printer and to immortality the celebrated "Essais," or rather the first two volumes, followed eight years later by the complete edition. Montaigne died on September 13, 1592. Since then there has been scarcely a moment free of the busy scratching of a pen setting down comment, criticism, notes, or polemical attack, with the " Essais" for their distinguished target; and it is, perhaps, the highest compliment to Montaigne's genius that we can truthfully say nothing unpleasant about these moths as they dance lightly or sluggishly in the fascinating light of a flame so fickle and yet so strong. Yesterday I had an armful of books beside me in a fragrant woodland nook under a dogwood-tree. Overhead the white flowers and green leaves made a tent-roof of comforting quality, while I read and considered, the birds meantime dashing down upon me a desultory shower of chirps, twitters, squeaks, and song-fragments. Whenever I lifted my eyes a wing sparkled near or far. Sand-lilies shook their delicate bells between the tufts of wood-grass. From a Royal Street second-hand bookstall I had brought...