upon its course there is absolutely no bar whatever.
Without air he cannot live. Nature cannot be escaped. Then face the
facts, and having done so, there will speedily arise a calm pleasure
beckoning onwards.

The shadows of the oak and chestnut-tree no longer shelter our rug;
the beams of the noonday sun fall vertically on us; we will leave
the spot for a while. The nightingale and the goldfinches, the
thrushes and blackbirds, are silent for a time in the sultry heat.
But they only wait for the evening to burst forth in one exquisite
chorus, praising this wondrous life and the beauties of the earth.

THE DAWN

There came to my bedside this morning a visitant that has been
present at the bedside of everyone who has lived for ten thousand
years. In the darkness I was conscious of a faint light not visible
if I looked deliberately to find it, but seen sideways, and where I
was not gazing. It slipped from direct glance as a shadow may slip
from a hand-grasp, but it was there floating in the atmosphere of
the room. I could not say that it shone on the wall or lit the
distant corner. Light is seen by reflection, but this light was
visible of itself like a living thing, a visitant from the unknown.
The dawn was in the chamber, and by degrees this intangible and
slender existence would enlarge and deepen into day. Ever since I
used to rise early to bathe, or shoot, or see the sunrise, the habit
has remained of waking at the same hour, so that I see the dawn
morning after morning, though I may sleep again immediately.
Sometimes the change of the seasons makes it broad sunlight,
sometimes it is still dark; then again the faint grey light is
there, and I know that the distant hills are becoming defined along
the sky. But though so familiar, that spectral light in the silence
has never lost its meaning, the violets are sweet year by year
though never so many summers pass away; indeed, its meaning grows
wider and more difficult as the time goes on. For think, this
spectre of the light--light's double-ganger--has stood by the couch
of every human being for thousands and thousands of years. Sleeping
or waking, happily dreaming, or wrenched with pain, whether they
have noticed it or not, the finger of this light has pointed towards
them. When they were building the pyramids, five thousand years ago,
straight the arrow of light shot from the sun, lit their dusky
forms, and glowed on the endless sand. Endless as that desert