and walks beside us through her mystic realm. We see no form, but
seem to hear the rustling of her wings.

Even in the toiling hum-drum city her spirit comes to us. There is a
somber presence in each long, dull street; and the dark river creeps
ghostlike under the black arches, as if bearing some hidden secret
beneath its muddy waves.

In the silent country, when the trees and hedges loom dim and blurred
against the rising night, and the bat's wing flutters in our face, and
the land-rail's cry sounds drearily across the fields, the spell sinks
deeper still into our hearts. We seem in that hour to be standing by
some unseen death-bed, and in the swaying of the elms we hear the sigh
of the dying day.

A solemn sadness reigns. A great peace is around us. In its light
our cares of the working day grow small and trivial, and bread and
cheese--ay, and even kisses--do not seem the only things worth
striving for. Thoughts we cannot speak but only listen to flood in
upon us, and standing in the stillness under earth's darkening dome,
we feel that we are greater than our petty lives. Hung round with
those dusky curtains, the world is no longer a mere dingy workshop,
but a stately temple wherein man may worship, and where at times in
the dimness his groping hands touch God's.



ON BEING HARD UP.

It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of