The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vision Spendid, by William MacLeod Raine

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Title: The Vision Spendid

Author: William MacLeod Raine

Posting Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1846]
Release Date: August, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VISION SPENDID ***

Produced by Mary Starr

THE VISION SPLENDID

By William MacLeod Raine

CHAPTER 1

Of all the remote streams of influence that pour both before and after
birth into the channel of our being, what an insignificant few--and
these only the more obvious--are traceable at all. We swim in a sea of
environment and heredity, are tossed hither and thither by we know not
what cross currents of Fate, are tugged at by a thousand eddies of which
we never dream. The sum of it all makes Life, of which we know so little
and guess so much, into which we dive so surely in those buoyant days
before time and tide have shaken confidence in our power to snatch
success and happiness from its mysterious depths.--From the Note Book of
a Dreamer.

A REBEL IN THE MAKING

Part 1

The air was mellow with the warmth of the young spring sun. Locusts
whirred in rhapsody. Bluebirds throbbed their love songs joyously. The
drone of insects, the shimmer of hear, were in the atmosphere. One could
almost see green things grow. To confine youth within four walls on such
a day was an outrage against human nature.

A lean, wiry boy, hatchet-faced, stared with dreamy eyes out of the
window of his prison. By raising himself in his seat while the teacher
was not looking he could catch a silvery gleam of the river through the
great firs. His thoughts were far afield. They were not concerned with
the capitals of the States he was supposed to be learning, but had fared
forth to the reborn earth, to the stir and movement of creeping things.
The call of nature awakening from its long winter sleep drummed in his
heart. He could sympathize with the bluebottle buzzing against the sunny
windowpane in its efforts to reach the free world outside.

Recess! With the sound of the gong his heart leaped, but he kept his
place in the line with perfect decorum. It would n