moods as this, when all things are forgotten, and heart
and mind are open to every sight and sound, that Nature comes to the
soul with some deep, sweet message of her inner being, and with
invisible hand lifts the curtain of mystery for one hushed and fleeting
moment.

As I write, the memory of a summer afternoon long ago comes back to me.
The old orchard sleeps in the dreamy air, the birds are silent, a
tranquil spirit broods over the whole earth. Under the wide-spreading
branches a boy is intently reading. He has fallen upon a bit of
transcendental writing in a magazine, and for the first time has
learned that to some men the great silent world about him, that seems
so real and changeless, is immaterial and unsubstantial--a vision
projected by the soul upon illimitable space. On the instant all
things are smitten with unreality; the solid earth sinks beneath him,
and leaves him solitary and awestruck in a universe that is a dream.
He cannot understand, but he feels what Emerson meant when he said,
"The Supreme Being does not build up Nature around us, but puts it
forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and
leaves." That which was fixed, stable, cast in permanent forms
forever, was suddenly annihilated by a revelation which spoke to the
heart rather than the intellect, and laid bare at a glance the unseen
spiritual foundations upon which all things rest at last. From that
moment the boy saw with other eyes, and lived henceforth in things not
made with hands.

If we could but revive the consciousness of childhood, if we could but
look out once more through its unclouded eyes, what divinity would sow
the universe with light and make it radiant with fadeless visions of
beauty and of truth!

Chapter XI

The Heart of the Woods

There are certain moods in which my feet turn, as by instinct, to the
woods. I set out upon the winding road with a zest of anticipation
whose edge no repetition of the after-experience ever dulls; I loiter
at the shaded turn, watched often by the bright, quick eye of the
squirrel peering over the old stone wall, and sometimes uttering a
chattering protest against my invasion of his hereditary privacy. Here
and there along the way of my familiar pilgrimage a great tree stands
at the roadside and spreads its far-reaching shadow over the traveller;
and these are the places where I always throw myself on the ground and
wait for the spirit of the hour and the