he air was! She breathed deeply as she walked, and at every
inspiration a burden seemed to fall from both body and soul. Just to be
alive was good--to breathe, to walk through the sun-flecked forest
paths, to feel the warmth of the sunshine on her shoulders, and to know
that the world of the forest belonged to her as it belonged to the bird
and the bee. She had almost reached the other side of the strip of
woodland, and through the trees she caught glimpses of a wheat field
stretching like a pale green sea from this strip of woodland to another
that belonged to a neighboring farm. She thought of a hymn her mother
often sang when the drudgery of the farm permitted her soul to rise on
the wings of song:

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between."

She lifted up her voice and sang the old hymn:

"There is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.

"There everlasting spring abides
And never withering flowers:
Death, like a narrow sea, divides
This pleasant land from ours."

Alas! How strange and sad it sounded with the "careless rapture" of the
birds. Never before had a song of death been sung in those forest
aisles, and suddenly she stopped, silenced by a sense of the incongruity
of such a hymn in the spring woods. Why should one sing of "sweet
fields" and "pleasant lands" beyond the sea of death? Right here are
pleasant lands and sweet fields, and our songs should be of the "pure
delight" of this old earth. Better than such worship as ours the worship
of the pagan, who went forth with music to meet the dawn and sang hymns
in praise of seed-time and harvest.

It is not alone by "getting and spending" that we "lay waste our powers"
and loosen our hold on the possessions that Nature so freely offers us.
Perpetually she calls to us with her voice of many waters, her winds and
bird songs. She opens and closes each day with cloudy splendors that
transcend the art of poet or painter. She spends centuries making the
columned sanctuaries of her forests more majestic than Solomon's temple,
and lights them with the glory of the sun and stars. Life more abundant
is in her air and sunshine. She offers to each soul the solitude of the
wilderness, and the mountains, where Christ found rest and strengt