n men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very
important to the traveller, whether the moon shines brightly or is
obscured. It is not easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth,
when she commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you have often been
abroad alone in moonlight nights. She seems to be waging continual war
with the clouds in your behalf. Yet we fancy the clouds to be _her_ foes
also. She comes on magnifying her dangers by her light, revealing,
displaying them in all their hugeness and blackness,--then suddenly
casts them behind into the light concealed, and goes her way triumphant
through a small space of clear sky.

In short, the moon traversing, or appearing to traverse, the small
clouds which lie in her way, now obscured by them, now easily
dissipating and shining through them, makes the drama of the moonlight
night to all watchers and night-travellers. Sailors speak of it as the
moon eating up the clouds. The traveller all alone, the moon all alone,
except for his sympathy, overcoming with incessant victory whole
squadrons of clouds above the forests and lakes and hills. When she is
obscured, he so sympathizes with her that he could whip a dog for her
relief, as Indians do. When she enters on a clear field of great extent
in the heavens, and shines unobstructedly, he is glad. And when she has
fought her way through all the squadron of her foes, and rides majestic
in a clear sky unscathed, and there are no more any obstructions in her
path, he cheerfully and confidently pursues his way, and rejoices in his
heart, and the cricket also seems to express joy in its song.

How insupportable would be the days, if the night, with its dews and
darkness, did not come to restore the drooping world! As the shades
begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we
steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in
search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey
of the intellect.

Richter says, that "the earth is every day overspread with the veil of
night for the same reason as the cages of birds are darkened, namely,
that we may the more readily apprehend the higher harmonies of thought
in the hush and quiet of darkness. Thoughts which day turns into smoke
and mist stand about us in the night as light and flames; even as the
column which fluctuates above the crater of Vesuvius in the daytime
appears a pillar of cloud, but by night a pillar of fire