s is a marvel of enduring freshness and ardour. All
round one gets a vivid illusion of Spring. The soft breezes caressing
the pines shake from their boughs the only evidence of last night's
storm. And these are more like the dew of Summer than the lees of the
copious tears of parting Autumn. A glorious morning, too glorious to
be enjoyed by a solitary soul. But near the rivulet yonder stands a
fox sniffing the morning air. Welcome, my friend. Welcome to my
coffee, too.

"I gather my mulberry sticks, kindle them with a handful of dried pine
needles, roast my coffee beans, and grind them while the water boils
in the pot. In half an hour I am qualified to go about my business.
The cups and coffee utensils I wash and restore to the chest--and what
else have I to do to-day? Pack up? Allah be praised, I have little
packing to do. I would pack up, if I could, a ton of the pine air and
the forest perfume, a strip of this limpid sky, and a cluster of those
stars. Never at such an hour and in this season of the year did I
enjoy such transporting limpidity in the atmosphere and such
reassuring expansiveness on the horizon. Why, even the stars, the
constellations, and the planets, are all here to enjoy this with me.
Not one of them, I think, is absent.

"The mountains are lost in the heavens. They are seeking, as it were,
the sisters of the little flowers sleeping at their feet. The moon,
resembling a crushed orange, is sinking in the Mediterranean. The
outlines of earth and sky all round are vague, indistinct. Were not
the sky so clear and the atmosphere so rare, thus affording the
planets and the constellations to shed their modicum of light, the
dusk of this hour would have deprived the scene of much of its pensive
beauty of colour and shade. But there is Pegasus, Andromeda,
Aldebaran, not to mention Venus and Jupiter and Saturn,--these alone
can conquer the right wing of darkness. And there is Mercury, like a
lighted cresset shaken by the winds, flapping his violet wings above
the Northeastern horizon; and Mars, like a piece of gold held out by
the trembling hand of a miser, is sinking in the blue of the sea with
Neptune; the Pleiades are stepping on the trail of the blushing moon;
the Balance lingers behind to weigh the destinies of the heroes who
are to contend with the dawn; while Venus, peeping from her tower over
Mt. Sanneen, is sending love vibrations to all. I would tell thee more
if I knew. But I swear to thee I never