attitude of trust that
what is our own will gravitate to us in obedience to eternal laws. But
I there learned that he had written the poem when a young man, life
all before him, his prospects in a dubious and chaotic condition, his
aspirations seeming likely to come to naught.

"I have lived to prove it true," he said,--"that which I but vaguely
divined when I wrote the lines. Our lives are all so fearfully and
wonderfully shot through with the very warp and woof of the universe,
past, present, and to come! No doubt at all that our own--that which
our souls crave and need--does gravitate toward us, or we toward it.
'Waiting' has been successful," he added, "not on account of its poetic
merit, but for some other merit or quality. It puts in simple and happy
form some common religious aspirations, without using the religious
jargon. People write me from all parts of the country that they treasure
it in their hearts; that it steadies their hand at the helm; that it
is full of consolation for them. It is because it is poetry allied
with religion that it has this effect; poetry alone would not do this;
neither would a prose expression of the same religious aspirations do
it, for we often outgrow the religious views and feelings of the past.
The religious thrill, the sense of the Infinite, the awe and majesty of
the universe, are no doubt permanent in the race, but the expression of
these feelings in creeds and forms addressed to the understanding,
or exposed to the analysis of the understanding, is as transient and
flitting as the leaves of the trees. My little poem is vague enough to
escape the reason, sincere enough to go to the heart, and poetic enough
to stir the imagination."

The power of accurate observation, of dispassionate analysis, of keen
discrimination and insight that we his readers are familiar with in his
writings about nature, books, men, and life in general, is here seen to
extend to self-analysis as well,--a rare gift; a power that makes his
opinions carry conviction. We feel he is not intent on upholding any
theory, but only on seeing things as they are, and reporting them as
they are.

A steady rain had set in early in the afternoon, effectually drowning
my hopes of a longer wood-land walk that day, but I was then, and many
a time since then have been, well content that it was so. I learned less
of woodland lore, but more of the woodland philosopher.

In quiet converse passed the hours of that memora