id Grayson."....

"Yes, the very same. A bad penny, a rolling stone."....

"Yes. I want you both to come here as quickly as you can. I have the
most important news for you. The mountain laurels are blooming, and
the wild strawberries are setting their fruit. Yes, yes, and in the
fields--all around here, to-day there are wonderful white patches of
daisies, and from where I sit I can see an old meadow as yellow as gold
with buttercups. And the bobolinks are hovering over the low spots. Oh,
but it is fine here--and we are not together!"....

"No; I cannot give exact directions. But take the Long Road and turn at
the turning by the tulip-tree, and you will find me at home. Come right
in without knocking."

I hung up the receiver. For a single instant it had seemed almost true,
and indeed I believe--I wonder--

Some day, I thought, just a bit sadly, for I shall probably not be here
then--some day, we shall be able to call our friends through space and
time. Some day we shall discover that marvellously simple coherer by
which we may better utilize the mysterious ether of love.

For a time I was sad with thoughts of the unaccomplished future, and
then I reflected that if I could not call up the Vedders so informally
I could at least write down a few paragraphs which would give them some
faint impression of that time and place. But I had no sooner taken
out my note-book and put down a sentence or two than I stuck fast. How
foolish and feeble written words are anyway! With what glib facility
they describe, but how inadequately they convey. A thousand times I have
thought to myself, "If only I could WRITE!"

Not being able to write I turned, as I have so often turned before, to
some good old book, trusting that I might find in the writing of another
man what I lacked in my own. I took out my battered copy of Montaigne
and, opening it at random, as I love to do, came, as luck would have it,
upon a chapter devoted to coaches, in which there is much curious (and
worthless) information, darkened with Latin quotations. This reading had
an unexpected effect upon me.

I could not seem to keep my mind down upon the printed page; it kept
bounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of a
woodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand and
one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate
the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page
in comparison with t