when we penetrate them, and consisted merely in shutting out all other
impressions, feelings, thoughts, and concentrating the full energy of
the attention upon what it was that I saw or heard at that instant.

At one moment I would let in all the sounds of the earth, at another all
the sights. So we practise the hand at one time, the foot at another, or
learn how to sit or to walk, and so acquire new grace for the whole
body. Should we do less in acquiring grace for the spirit? It will
astonish one who has not tried it how full the world is of sounds
commonly unheard, and of sights commonly unseen, but in their nature,
like the smallest blossoms, of a curious perfection and beauty.

Out of this practice grew presently, and as it seems to me
instinctively, for I cannot now remember the exact time of its
beginning, a habit of repeating under my breath, or even aloud, and in a
kind of singsong voice, fragmentary words and sentences describing what
it was that I saw or felt at the moment, as, for example:

"The pink blossoms of the wild crab-apple trees I see from the hill....
The reedy song of the wood thrush among the thickets of the wild
cherry.... The scent of peach leaves, the odour of new-turned soil in
the black fields.... The red of the maples in the marsh, the white of
apple trees in bloom.... I cannot find Him out--nor know why I am
here...."

Some form of expression, however crude, seemed to reenforce and
intensify the gatherings of the senses; and these words, afterward
remembered, or even written down in the little book I sometimes carried
in my pocket, seemed to awaken echoes, however faint, of the exaltation
of that moment in the woods or fields, and enabled me to live twice