know which is the stillest hour of the night? The hour before
dawn. It is at that time, too, that in our winter nights the mercury
dips down to its lowest level. Perhaps the two things have a causal
relation--whatever there is of wild life in nature, withdraws more
deeply within itself; it curls up and dreams. On calm summer mornings
you hear no sound except the chirping and twittering of the sleeping
birds. The birds are great dreamers--like dogs; like dogs they will
twitch and stir in their sleep, as if they were running and flying and
playing and chasing each other. Just stalk a bird's nest of which you
know at half past two in the morning, some time during the month of
July; and before you see them, you will hear them. If there are young
birds in the nest, all the better; take the mother bird off and the
little ones will open their beaks, all mouth as they are, and go to
sleep again; and they will stretch their featherless little wings; and
if they are a little bit older, they will even try to move their tiny
legs, as if longing to use them. As with dogs, it is the young ones
that dream most. I suppose their impressions are so much more vivid, the
whole world is so new to them that it rushes in upon them charged
with emotion. Emotions penetrate even us to a greater depth than mere
apperceptions; so they break through that crust that seems to envelop
the seat of our memory, and once inside, they will work out again into
some form of consciousness--that of sleep or of the wakeful dream which
we call memory.

The stillest hour! In starlit winter nights the heavenly bodies seem to
take on an additional splendour, something next to blazing, overweening
boastfulness. "Now sleeps the world," they seem to say, "but we are
awake and weaving destiny" And on they swing on their immutable paths.

The stillest hour! If you step out of a sleeping house and are alone,
you are apt to hold your breath; and if you are not, you are apt to
whisper. There is an expectancy in the air, a fatefulness--a loud word
would be blasphemy that offends the ear and the feeling of decency It
is the hour of all still things, the silent things that pass like dreams
through the night. You seem to stand hushed. Stark and bare, stripped of
all accidentals, the universe swings on its way.

The stillest hour! But how much stiller than still, when the earth has
drawn over its shoulders that morning mist that allows of no slightest
breath--when under the