upon the mood when
two spirits have achieved a certain nearness of thought, have drawn as
close as the strange fence of identity allows. But as I went home, I
stood for a moment at the edge of a pleasant grove, an outlying
pleasaunce of a great house on the verge of the town. The trees grew
straight and tall within it, and all the underwood was full of spring
flowers and green ground-plants, expanding to light and warmth; the sky
was all full of light, dying away to a calm and liquid green, the
colour of peace. Here I encountered another friend, a retiring man of
letters, who lives apart from the world in dreams of his own. He is a
bright-eyed, eager creature, tall and shadowy, who has but a slight
hold upon the world. We talked for a few moments of trivial things,
till a chance question of mine drew from him a sad statement of his own
health. He had been lately, he said, to a physician, and had been
warned that he was in a somewhat precarious condition. I tried to
comfort him, but he shook his head; and though he tried to speak
lightly and cheerfully, I could see that there was a shadow of doom
upon him.

As I turned to go, he held up his hand, "Listen to the birds!" he said.
We were silent, and could hear the clear flute-like notes of thrushes
hidden in the tall trees, and the soft cooing of a dove. "That gives
one," he said, "some sense of the happiness which one cannot capture
for oneself!" He smiled mournfully, and in a moment I saw his light
figure receding among the trees. What a world it is for sorrow! My
friend was going, bearing the burden of a lonely grief, which I could
not lighten for him; and yet the whole scene was full of so sweet a
content, the birds full of hope and delight, the flowers and leaves
glad to feel themselves alive. What was one to make of it all? Where
to turn for light? What conceivable benefit could result from thus
perpetually desiring to know and perpetually being baffled?

Yet, after all, to-day has been one of those rare days, like the gold
sifted from the _debris_ of the mine, which has had for me, by some
subtle alchemy of the spirit, the permanent quality which is often
denied to more stirring incidents and livelier experiences. I had seen
the mysteries of life and death, of joy and sorrow, sharply and sadly
contrasted. I had been one with Nature, with all her ardent ecstasies,
her vital impulses; and then I had seen too the other side of the
picture, a soul con