the Purple Mountains and the Green Sea. The road to it lay through
woods and stretches of corn and pasture land. It was Autumn. In every
field were reapers cutting or binding the corn. At every turn of the
road were wagons laden with sheaves. Then the scene changed. The land
became poor. The fields were covered with crops that were thin and
unripe. The people who passed on the road had a look of want on their
faces. The travelers passed on. Every eye was searching the horizon
for the first glimpse of the mountain peaks. In every heart was the
joyful hope of finding the Golden Age. Can you think what the joy of a
young student going for the first time to a university is? It was a
joy like his. While this joy was in their hearts, the road passed into
a mighty forest. And suddenly among the shadows of the trees a
miserable spectacle crossed their path. It was a crowd of peasants of
the very poorest class. A plague had fallen on their homes, and they
were fleeing from their village, which lay among the trees a mile or
two to the right.

Yestergold was the first to meet them. He was filled with anguish.
His sensitive nature could not bear to see suffering in others. He
shrank from the very sight of misery. Turning to his companions, he
said, "If the Lord of Life had been traveling on this road as He was on
that other, long ago, when the widow of Nain met Him with her dead son,
He would have destroyed the plague by a word." "Oh, holy and beautiful
Age!" exclaimed the poet, "why dost thou lie in thy soft swathings of
light, and power to do mighty deeds, so far behind us in the past?"
"But let us use it as a golden background," said the painter. "That is
the beautiful Age on which Art is called to portray the Divine form of
the Great Physician!" Saying these fine words, the party rode swiftly
past.