ever-deeper blue against the setting sun behind me. Often at such
times I would hear a rushing in the highest branches, and turning very
silently, see the outposts of a troop of monkeys peering down through
the gleaming foliage. Then, if I moved, neither head nor limb, others
would come, and yet others, leaping from branch to branch and plunging
down from higher to lower levels like divers cleaving a deep green sea;
until at last some slightest involuntary movement of mine would put the
whole host to flight, and greybeards, young warriors, camp followers and
mothers with their children on their backs would spring precipitate from
tree to tree, screaming and gibbering like Homer's sapless dead. Then,
when the stars rushed out and the darkness came on apace, it was sweet
to wander home along those paths so dear to primitive men in all
countries, narrow paths and sinuous, smoothed by the footfalls of
centuries, winding patiently round every obstacle and never breaking
through after the brutal manner of civilization. The fire-flies gleamed
in the brushwood on either hand, and from every side rose that
all-pervading hum of busy insects through which the tropic forest is
never still.

Amid these surroundings, so peaceful and so new, my soul was stilled to
that {galene} or ocean-calm which the old Greek philosopher found the
highest good for man. And month by month the mere material side of life
grew of less moment; the body fretted the spirit less, but often seemed
a tissue of gossamer lightness through which it could pass at will, as
the breeze through the gleaming spider-webs upon the bushes at dawn.
There were times when the ideal of the mystic seemed well-nigh
accomplished, when my body might almost have been abandoned by the soul
for hours upon end. The words of Emerson seemed to be fulfilled: "By
being assimilated to the original soul by whom and after whom all things
subsist, the soul of man does then easily flow into all things and all
things flow into it: they mix; and he is present and sympathetic with
their structure and law."

As I write now amid the roar of London traffic, I well believe that to
men who have never bathed in eastern moonlight, the description will
sound hyperbolical and false. But when I think of those old days, how
serene they were, how apart, I let the words stand: I am not artist
enough to give them a more plausible simplicity. All conditions that a
recluse might crave seemed now to be fulfill