tor, but I was glad that our lines of life
had not crossed.

So please Him, thus would I live content.

IV

The last bright streamer had disappeared, but still there remained a
faint, chaste glow above the dark line of hills. An unseen Hand had sown
the sky thickly with stars, and more fell to their appointed places as
the moments passed. A bull-frog boomed out his guttural note, and Fido
began to whine and gnaw at the rail just below my feet. He was getting
hungry, and I acquiesced to his wordless plea to go home. Night had now
come, and the air was chilly, so I buttoned my coat close up to my chin,
and moved briskly. We were some distance from home, but the lights of
the city were reflected in the sky, and besides, it was not dark,
because of the stars, and the road over which we went had but one end.

I ate in quiet satisfaction the lunch which Mrs. Moss had saved for me,
but when I tried to interest myself in Emerson, a few minutes later, I
found that one of my favorites bored me. This sudden lack of
appreciation of the great essayist annoyed me, and I forced my eyes to
traverse line after line, hoping that the pleasing charm which they had
always held for me would return. But this policy proved futile, so at
length I quietly closed the book and put it down on the table, disgusted
with myself. Perhaps my mind required something in lighter vein, and
there was my bookcase, with its glass doors open, as they usually were.
But the delightful metre of the "Lady of the Lake" seemed halting and
tame to me that night, and this volume I did not close as gently as I
had the former one, but flung it carelessly on the table and walked
nervously to the window and raised the sash. For a moment--only a
moment--I stood there, trying to find a few stars through the curtain of
factory smoke which hung overhead, and letting the cool air blow about
me. Then I put the window down, and came back to my easy-chair,
satisfied, for I had solved the riddle of my unrest.

That afternoon's walk had showed me of what I was depriving myself. It
dawned upon me in that moment that the pastoral joys which I had known
that day were dearer to my soul than printed pages and the
mind-narrowing captivity of four walls. Out there were unbounded
possibilities for the mind and soul, lessons to be learned, pages to be
read, secrets to discover,--a message in each soft gurgle of the brook;
a whisper from each stirring leaf; a hidden story in the