the setting sun, transforming the ocean into a sea of glory. 'I
found,' she said, 'that I was losing my taste for that, and'--holding
up her Bible--'my taste for this; so I gave it up!' She was a wise
woman. Onions are fine things in their own way. God has undoubtedly
left a place in His world for the strong, vivid, elemental things. But
they must be kept to that place. God has strewn the ground around me
with the food that angels eat, and I must allow nothing on earth to
destroy my taste for such sublime and wondrous fare.

IV

ON GETTING OVER THINGS

We get over things. It is the most amazing faculty that we possess.
War or pestilence; drought or famine; fire or flood; it does not
matter. However devastating the catastrophe, however frightful the
slaughter, however total the eclipse, we surmount our sorrows and find
ourselves still smiling when the storm is overpast. I remember once
penetrating into the wild and desolate interior of New Zealand. From a
jagged and lonely eminence I surveyed a landscape that almost
frightened one. Not a house was in sight, nor a road, nor one living
creature, nor any sign of civilization. I looked in every direction at
what seemed to have been the work of angry Titans. Far as the eye
could see, the earth around me appeared to have been a battle-field on
which an army of giants had pelted each other with mountains. The
whole country was broken, weird, precipitous, and grand. In every
direction huge cliffs towered perpendicularly about you; bottomless
abysses yawned at your feet; and every scarped pinnacle and beetling
crag scowled menacingly at your littleness and scowled defiance at your
approach. One wondered by what titanic forces the country had been so
ruthlessly crushed and crumbled and torn to shreds. Did any startled
eye witness this volcanic frolic? What a sight it must have been to
have watched these towering ranges split and scattered; to have seen
the placid snowclad heights shivered, like fragile vases, to fragments;
to have beheld the mountains tossed about like pebbles; to have seen
the valleys torn and rent and twisted; and the rivers flung back in
terror to make for themselves new channels as best they could! It must
have been a fearsome and wondrous spectacle to have observed the
slumbering forces of the universe in such a burst of passion! Nature
must have despaired of her quiet and sylvan landscape. 'It is ruined,'
she sobbed; 'it can ne