HOMES NEAR TO NATURE. 



2 fg 



The author is almost unconsciously 

 ever thinking of the woods. He evident- 

 ly has in mind walking- through the 

 green waving grasses of the fields and 

 entering the deep recesses of the woods 

 when he pictures the music of a violin. 

 In this, while the words do not say so. 

 one feels the parallel of the echo from 

 the woods, the hush of a summer's day, 

 the gentle bending of the grass by an 

 occasionally zephyr, and the calm, the 

 gentle expectation of leaving the fields 

 and entering the path to the depths 

 of the unexplored : 



"The musician had begun to thrum 

 the strings of his violin. We turned 

 to look at him. He still sat in his 

 chair, his ear bent to the echoing cham- 

 ber of the violin. Soon he laid his 

 bow to the strings and a great chord 

 hushed every whisper and died into 

 a sweet, low melody, in which his 

 thought seemed to be feeling its way 

 through sombre paths of sound." 



To Irving Bacheller the woods are 

 a sacred edifice : 



"The great roof of the wilderness, 

 had turned red and faded into yel- 

 low. Soon its rafters began to show 

 through, and then, in a day or two, 

 they were all bare but for some patches 

 of evergreen." 



And again in "The Master :" 



"There is a nook in the woods near 

 the Hermitage where we love to go- 

 of a summer day and sit in cool, deep 

 shadows and read or sing, or talk, or 

 pray to some special saint in. our calen- 

 dar. We call it our cathedral, and it 

 is very old. Before houses were made 

 with hands or ever a man was born 

 of a woman it was there, and unnum- 

 bered dead are in its crypt and every 

 age has added something to its gran- 

 deur. Gray, tapered columns rise to 

 green arches far above our heads. Dim 

 aisles, carpeted with mosses, green and 

 gray, hush our footsteps so they dis- 

 turb not the low hymning of the pines. 

 Rugs of linea and robin's wheat in- 

 vite us, and here and there ferns and 



branches shake out their incense as our tween the tr.ee columns there were long, 

 feet touch them. On either side is a golden panes, all thickly wrought with 

 great, memorial window when the sun sprays and branches, to check and 

 is low, and you would say that be- soften the glow." 



THE VIEW FROM THE WEST. 

 'When you enter a house you begin to feel the 

 heart of its owner." 



