parallel with the river a long way. The river flowed on my right.
That is, I knew that it was flowing, but I could not have told how I
knew, it was so slow. Still swollen, it was of a clear brown, in
which you could see the browner trouts darting to and fro with such
a slippery gliding, that the motion seemed the result of will,
without any such intermediate and complicate arrangement as brain
and nerves and muscles. The water-beetles went spinning about over
the surface; and one glorious dragon-fly made a mist about him with
his long wings. And over all, the sun hung in the sky, pouring down
life; shining on the roots of the willows at the bottom of the
stream; lighting up the black head of the water-rat as he hurried
across to the opposite bank; glorifying the rich green lake of the
grass; and giving to the whole an utterance of love and hope and
joy, which was, to him who could read it, a more certain and full
revelation of God than any display of power in thunder, in
avalanche, in stormy sea. Those with whom the feeling of religion is
only occasional, have it most when the awful or grand breaks out of
the common; the meek who inherit the earth, find the God of the
whole earth more evidently present--I do not say more present, for
there is no measuring of His presence--more evidently present in the
commonest things. That which is best He gives most plentifully, as
is reason with Him. Hence the quiet fulness of ordinary nature;
hence the Spirit to them that ask it.

I soon came within sound of the mill; and presently, crossing the
stream that flowed back to the river after having done its work on
the corn, I came in front of the building, and looked over the
half-door into the mill. The floor was clean and dusty. A few full
sacks, tied tight at the mouth--they always look to me as if
Joseph's silver cup were just inside--stood about. In the farther