tact with trickling drops and oozy bogs, and
perfumed with spicy cedar, soothes and cools. Yonder lies prostrate
some mighty giant of the forest, victim of a ruthless storm, grim with
decay and raising a vertical base of black sod and tangled roots torn
from the earth where a gaping wound shows its former place. Here a
rock, moist with swamp-sweat, lichen-covered and set in moss. There a
clump of thick-grown cedars, deep shelter for the timid rabbit. All is
noiseless, breathless. Not even the squirrel chatters, for it is not
long past noon. But farther on comes a dull, low murmuring, scarcely
to be heard at first, so nicely does it fit this gentle monotone of
silence, yet soon filling the trembling air with overtones that rise
and fall and swell again in varying chords. It is the river. A few
steps more and you are there, and beside the stream in a fragrant bed
of ferns, with one hand caressing the delicate tresses of the
maidenhair, and the other dipped among the ripples, you give yourself
up, half dozing, to thoughts of the long ago and the far away that
seem to float up from the past along the dim windings of the stream.
The sun makes dancing spots of dark and light between the fluttering
leaves, and throws a changing shadow upon yon deep pool, where a grand
old beech, festooned with clematis, leans its gray trunk far over as
if to bless the stream whose waters, bubbling swiftly over the pebbles
a little higher up, calm themselves here to rest in peace. The
wood-thrush sends its plaintive, solitary note of silver-globuled
melody from the inmost forest. No other sound, save when a wagon now
and then rolls its quick rumble across a bridge, and then is gone like
some self-conscious intruder. But luxury like this is the very thief
of time. Before you are aware the waves of heat have ceased to form a
throbbing air-hive for humming insects, and the cool of early twilight
has come on, attended by lengthening shadows. And so home again along
the dewy fields, while an orchestra of crickets chirps a happy end
beneath the summer stars to the day that is done. It is in ways like
this that poets renew their souls, the old their youth, and weary
hearts, in sweet release from care, gain strength for life.

_Literary Monthly_, 1887.

QUESTIONINGS

GEORGE L. RICHARDSON '88

There are strange complications in it all,
This life of ours--had I fourfold the wit
That as his share to any man doth fall,
I fear me t