here no sound ever reached us save the organ
music of the great boughs when the wind evoked their sublime harmonies.
Many a time, as we have sat silent while the tones of that majestic
symphony rose and fell about us, we seemed to become a part of the
scene itself; we felt the unfathomed depth of a music produced by no
conscious thought, wrought out by no conscious toil, but akin, in its
spontaneity and naturalness, with the fragrance of the flower. And
with these thrilling notes there came to us the thought of the calm,
reposeful, irresistible growth of Nature; never hasting, never at rest;
the silent spreading of the tree, the steady burning of the star, the
noiseless flow of the river! Was not this sublime unconsciousness of
time, this glorious appropriation of eternity, something we had missed
all our lives, and, in missing it, had lost our birthright of quiet
hours, calm thought, sweet fellowship, ripening character? The fever
and tumult of the world we had left were discords in a strain, that had
never yielded its music before.

For nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oars forsake.

After one of these long, delicious days in the heart of the pines,
Rosalind slipped her hand in mine as we walked slowly homeward.

"This is the first day of my life," she said.

V

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

It was one of those entrancing mornings when the earth seems to have
been made over under cover of night, and one drinks the first draught
of a new experience when he sees it by the light of a new day. Such
mornings are not uncommon in Arden, where the nightly dews work a
perpetual miracle of freshness. On this particular morning we had
strayed long and far, the silence and solitude of the woods luring us
hour after hour with unspoken promises to the imagination. We had come
at length to a place so secluded, so remote from stir and sound, that
one might dream there of the sacredness of ancient oracles and the
revels of ancient gods.

Rosalind had gathered wild flowers along the way, and sat at the base
of a great tree intently disentan