falls and closes it, a sphere is born. And in that sphere is all of
earth.

Its oils and its minerals are there, and one day, becoming too full
of richness, it bursts, and throws open a five-roomed granary, stored
with richer fabric than ever came from the shuttles of Fez and
holding globes of oil such as the olives of Hebron dreamed not of.

And in that fabric is the world clothed.

Oh, little loom of the cotton-plant, poet that can show us the sky,
painter that paints it, artisan that reaches out, and, from the skein
of a sunbeam, the loom of the air and the white of its own soul,
weaves the cloth that clothes the world!

From dawn and darkness building a loom. From sunlight and shadow
weaving threads of such fineness that the spider's were ropes of sand
and the hoar frost's but clumsy icicles.

Weaving--weaving--weaving them. And the delicately patterned tapestry
of ever-changing clouds forming patterns of a fabric, white as the
snow of the centuries, determined that since it has to make the
garments of men, it will make them unsullied.

Oh, little plant, poet, painter, master-artisan!

It is true to Nature to the last. The summer wanes and the winter
comes, and when the cotton sphere bursts, 'tis a ball of snow, but a
dazzling white, spidery snow, which warms and does not chill, brings
comfort and not care, wealth and the rich warm blood, and not the
pinches of poverty.

There are those who cannot hear God's voice unless He speaks to them
in the thunders of Sinai, nor see Him unless He flares before them in
the bonfires of a burning bush. They grumble because His Messenger
came to a tribe in the hill countries of Long Ago. They wish to see
the miracle of the dead arising. They see not the miracle of life
around them. Death from Life is more strange to them than life from
death.

'Tis the silent voice that speaks the loudest. Did Sinai speak louder
than this? Hear it:

"I am a bloom, and yet I reflect the sky from the morning's star to
the midnight's. I am a flower, yet I show you the heaven from the
dawn of its birth to the twilight of its death. I am a boll, and yet
a miniature earth stored with silks and satins, oils of the olives,
minerals of all lands. And when I am ripe I throw open my five-roomed
granary, each fitted to the finger and thumb of the human hand, with
a depth between, equalled only by the palm."

O voice of the cotton-plant, do we need to go to oracles or listen
for a diviner voice