But when he wants to die, by all means let him hunt
out a town in the valley of Pennsylvania or Virginia: Nature and man
there are so ineffably self-contained, content with that which is, shut
in from the outer surge, putting forth their little peculiarities, as
tranquil and glad to be alive as if they were pulseless sea-anemones,
and after a while going back to the Being whence they came, just as
tranquil and glad to be dead.
Paul Blecker had some such fancy as this, that last evening before the
regiment of which he was surgeon started for Harper's Ferry, while he
and the Captain were coming from camp by the hill-road into the village
(or burgh: there are no Villages in Pennsylvania). Nothing was lost on
Blecker; his wide, nervous eyes took all in: the age and complacent
quiet of this nook of the world, the full-blooded Nature asleep in the
yellow June sunset; why! she had been asleep there since the beginning,
he knew. The very Indians in these hills must have been a fishing,
drowsy crew; their names and graves yet dreamily haunted the farms and
creek-shores. The Covenanters who came after them never had roused
themselves enough to shake them off. Covenanters: the Doctor began
joking to himself, as he walked along, humming some tune, about how the
spirit of every sect came out, always alike, in the temperament, the
very cut of the face, or whim of accent.
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