t, now there is no
old dream that has not the look of coming true, no hope too wild and
strange and beautiful to be confidently entertained. Even, if you wish
to believe in fairies, science will hardly say you nay. Those dryads and
fauns, which Keats saw "frightened away" by the prosaic times in which
it was his misfortune to be alive and unrecognized, are trooping back in
every American woodland, and the god whose name I have invoked has
become more than ever

the leaven
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal.

His worship is all the more sincere because it is not self-conscious.
If you were to tell the trout-fisher, or the duck-shooter, or the
camper-out, that he is a worshipper of Pan, he would look at you in a
kindly bewilderment. He would seem a little anxious about you, but it
would be only a verbal misunderstanding. It would not take him long to
realize that you were only putting in terms of a creed the intuitive and
inarticulate faith of his heart. Perhaps the most convincing sign of
this new-old faith in nature is the unconsciousness of the believer. He
has no idea that he is believing or having faith in anything. He is
simply loving the green earth and the blue sea, and the ways of birds
and fish and animals; but he is so happy in his innocent, ignorant joy
that he seems almost to shine with his happiness. There is, literally, a
light about him--that light which edges with brightness all sincere
action. The trout, or the wild duck, or the sea bass is only an innocent
excuse to be alone with the Infinite. To be alone. To be afar. Men sail
precarious craft in perilous waters for no reason they could tell
of. They may think that trawling, or dredging, or whaling is the
explanation: the real reason is the mystery we call the Sea.

Ostensibly, of course, the angler is a man who goes out to catch fish;
yet there is a great difference between an angler and a fishmonger.
Though the angler catches no fish, though his creel be empty as he
returns home at evening, there is a curious happiness and peace about
him which a mere fishmonger would be at a loss to explain. Fish, as I
said, were merely an excuse; and, as he vainly waited for fish, without
knowing it, he was learning the rhythm of the stream, and the silence of
ferns was entering into his soul, and the calm and patience of meadows
were dreamily becoming a part of him. Suddenl