g, for she knew the hidden meaning of the work that
lay before her. Was not Nature cleaning the whole earth, purifying it
with her sunshine and her wind, and washing it with her dew and rain? If
men and women could only live in the wind and sun with no shelter but
the branches of the trees! But since they must have houses, these, too,
must know the wholesome touch of wind, sun, and water. Lovely pictures
of clouds, trees, fields, birds, and flowers filled her brain and made
more apparent the ugliness of her room. Her sense of smell, sharpened by
breathing forest air, took instant note of the musty odors that came
from walls, floors, and clothing. She pushed the bedstead near the
window so that she might feel the night air blowing over her face as she
slept and resolved that the next night should find that room as like to
a nook in the woods as she could make it; and when the scrubbing and
whitewashing were over, she would go again and again to the woods and
gather the flowers of spring, summer, and autumn to sweeten the air of
the old house. As she blew out the lamp, there was a rumble of thunder
from the west; a wind with the smell of rain swept through the dark
room, and, laying her head on the pillow, she smiled to think how the
creatures of the forest would look and feel in the scented night and the
falling rain. All the spring landscape on which she had gazed that day
seemed imprinted on her brain, and when she closed her eyes, it passed
like a panorama before her inner vision: wind-swept trees whose leafy
branches waved against the pale blue sky; tremulous shadows on the fresh
greensward; flowers of the garden and flowers of the forest flushing,
purpling, paling, flaming, glowing in orderly beds or in wild forest
nooks; long grey fences outlining farms and roads; sunlight glinting on
the wings of flying birds; misty hills and little valleys sloping down
to the level of the fertile fields; glory of midday and greater glory of
sunset softening into the quiet, star-lit evening skies.

What need of the painter's canvas and brush when the soul can thus
imprint on its records Beauty's every line and every color to be
recalled instantly from the shadows of time by Memory's magic art?

The thunder muttered fitfully, and presently the rain came, dashing
against the roof like a rattle of musketry, then quieting to a steady
downpour that promised to last all night. She lay still, listening
drowsily to the music of the storm