eep recesses,
fearsome for their very silence. And yet I with magic rod and staff
walking within--boldly, fearing no evil, full of faith, hope, courage,
love, invoking images of terror but for the joy of braving them. Ah,
tow-headed boy, shall I tread as lightly that dread pathway when I come
to it? Shall I, like you, fear no evil!

So that great morning went away. I heard nothing of singing or sermon
and came not to myself until my mother, touching my arm, asked me if I
had been asleep! And I smiled and thought how little grown people
knew--and I looked up at the sad sick face of the old preacher with a
new interest and friendliness. I felt, somehow, that he too was a
familiar of my secret valley. I should have liked to ask him, but I did
not dare. So I followed my mother when she went to speak to him, and
when he did not see, I touched his coat.

After that how I watched when he came to the reading. And one great
Sunday, he chose a chapter from Ecclesiastes, the one that begins
sonorously:

"Remember now thy creator in the days of thy
youth."

Surely that gaunt preacher had the true fire in his gray soul. How his
voice dwelt and quivered and softened upon the words!

"While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the
stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after
the rain----"
Thus he brought in the universe to that
small church and filled the heart of a boy.

"In the days when the keepers of the house shall
tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves,
and the grinders cease because they are few, and those
that look out of the windows be darkened."

"And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when
the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up
at the voice of the bird and all the daughters of music
shall be brought low."

Do not think that I understood the meaning of those passages: I am not
vain enough to think I know even now--but the _sound_ of them, the roll
of them, the beautiful words, and above all, the pictures!

Those Daughters of Music, how I lived for days imagining them! They were
of the trees and the hills, and they were very beautiful but elusive;
one saw them as he heard singing afar off, sweet strains fading often
into silences. Daughters of Music! Daughters of Music! And why should
they be brought low?

Doors shut in the street--how I _saw_ them--a long, long street, silent,
full of sunshine, and the doors shut, and no sound anywhere but the low
sound of the grinding