ight, crystalline piece of weather arrives
instead of the foretold tempest, do we not feel a secret sense of
pleasure which goes beyond our mere comfort in the sunshine? The whole
affair is not as easy as a sum in simple addition, after all,--at least
not with our present knowledge. It is a good joke on the Weather Bureau.
"Aha, Old Probabilities!" we say, "you don't know it all yet; there are
still some chances to be taken!"

Some day, I suppose, all things in the heavens above, and in the earth
beneath, and in the hearts of the men and women who dwell between, will
be investigated and explained. We shall live a perfectly ordered life,
with no accidents, happy or unhappy. Everybody will act according to
rule, and there will be no dotted lines on the map of human existence,
no regions marked "unexplored." Perhaps that golden age of the machine
will come, but you and I will hardly live to see it. And if that seems
to you a matter for tears, you must do your own weeping, for I cannot
find it in my heart to add a single drop of regret.

The results of education and social discipline in humanity are fine. It
is a good thing that we can count upon them. But at the same time let us
rejoice in the play of native traits and individual vagaries. Cultivated
manners are admirable, yet there is a sudden touch of inborn grace and
courtesy that goes beyond them all. No array of accomplishments can
rival the charm of an unsuspected gift of nature, brought suddenly to
light. I once heard a peasant girl singing down the Traunthal, and the
echo of her song outlives, in the hearing of my heart, all memories of
the grand opera.

The harvest of the gardens and the orchards, the result of prudent
planting and patient cultivation, is full of satisfaction. We anticipate
it in due season, and when it comes we fill our mouths and are grateful.
But pray, kind Providence, let me slip over the fence out of the garden
now and then, to shake a nut-tree that grows untended in the wood. Give
me liberty to put off my black coat for a day, and go a-fishing on a
free stream, and find by chance a wild strawberry.

LOVERS AND LANDSCAPE

"He insisted that the love that was of real value in the world was
n't interesting, and that the love that was interesting was n't always
admirable. Love that happened to a person like the measles or fits, and
was really of no particular credit to itself or its victims, was the
sort that got into the books and w