confess they seem to
stick in the stomach as the pitch of the cones sticks on the hands.
This, however, though it remains for days, works no evil; but the
pinons in the stomach, and the stomach on the nerves,--that is a
different question.

"The only pines I have seen in the United States are those in front of
Emerson's house in Concord; but compared with my native trees, they
are scrubby and mean. These pine parasols under which I lay me,
forgiving and forgetting, are fit for the gods. And although closely
planted, they grow and flourish without much ado. I have seen spots
not exceeding a few hundred square feet holding over thirty trees, and
withal stout and lusty and towering. Indeed, the floor of the Tent
seems too narrow at times for its crowded guests; but beneath the
surface there is room for every root, and over it, the sky is broad
enough for all.

"Ah, the bewildering vistas through the variegated pillars, taking in
a strip of sea here, a mountain peak there, have an air of enchantment
from which no human formula can release a pilgrim-soul. They remind
me--no; they can not remind me of anything more imposing. But when I
was visiting the great Mosques of Cairo I was reminded of them. Yes,
the pine forests are the great mosques of Nature. And for art-lovers,
what perennial beauty of an antique art is here. These majestic
pillars arched with foliage, propping a light-green ceiling, from
which cones hang in pairs and in clusters, and through which curiously
shaped clouds can be seen moving in a cerulean sky; and at night,
instead of the clouds, the stars--the distant, twinkling, white and
blue stars--what to these are the decorations in the ancient mosques?
There, the baroques, the arabesques, the colourings gorgeous, are
dead, at least inanimate; here, they palpitate with life. The moving,
swelling, flaming, flowing life is mystically interwoven in the
evergreen ceiling and the stately colonnades. Ay, even the horizon
yonder, with its planets and constellations rising and setting ever,
is a part of the ceiling decoration.

"Here in this grand Mosque of Nature, I read my own Koran. I, Khalid,
a Beduin in the desert of life, a vagabond on the highway of thought,
I come to this glorious Mosque, the only place of worship open to me,
to heal my broken soul in the perfumed atmosphere of its celestial
vistas. The mihrabs here are not in this direction nor in that. But
whereso one turns there are niches in which the