e. Herein is our consolation.

* * * * *

Rest a moment on the threshold of this infinite world of inglorious
good, of quiet activities. Instantly we are under the charm we feel in
stretches of untrodden snow, in hiding wood-flowers, in disappearing
pathways that seem to lead to horizons without bourn. The world is so
made that the engines of labor, the most active agencies, are everywhere
concealed. Nature affects a sort of coquetry in masking her operations.
It costs you pains to spy her out, ingenuity to surprise her, if you
would see anything but results and penetrate the secrets of her
laboratories. Likewise in human society, the forces which move for good
remain invisible, and even in our individual lives; what is best in us
is incommunicable, buried in the depths of us. And the more vital are
these sensibilities and intuitions, confounding themselves with the very
source of our being, the less ostentatious they are: they think
themselves profaned by exposure to the light of day. There is a secret
and inexpressible joy in possessing at the heart of one's being, an
interior world known only to God, whence, nevertheless, come impulses,
enthusiasms, the daily renewal of courage, and the most powerful motives
for activity among our fellow men. When this intimate life loses in
intensity, when man neglects it for what is superficial, he forfeits in
worth all that he gains in appearance. By a sad fatality, it happens
that in this way we often become less admirable in proportion as we are
more admired. And we remain convinced that what is best in the world is
unknown there; for only those know it who possess it, and if they speak
of it, in so doing they destroy its charm.

There are passionate lovers of nature whom she fascinates most in
by-places, in the cool of forests, in the clefts of canons, everywhere
that the careless lover is not admitted to her contemplation. Forgetting
time and the life of the world, they pass days in these inviolate
stillnesses, watching a bird build its nest or brood over its young, or
some little groundling at its gracious play. So to seek the good within
himself--one must go where he no longer finds constraint, or pose, or
"gallery" of any sort, but the simple fact of a life made up of wishing
to be what it is good for it to be, without troubling about anything
else.

May we be permitted to record here some observations made from life? As
no names are given, they