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TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 55 
note. Nature’s tone is rarely loud, rarely over- 
accentuated. The blue-jay in the orchard, 
the cat-bird in the hedgerow, the kingfisher by 
the brook, each is a key to a harmony. Na- 
ture, on the whole, suggests under-statement 
and a reserve of color. Her contrasts are not 
of the Rembrandt type; her expressions do 
not abound in adjectives. Gay, flaunting flow- 
ers and gorgeous birds are rare save in green- 
houses and cages. ‘The suppressed power felt 
in the solemn stillness of great woods is sug- 
gestive of that force which some men of few 
words bear about with them. 
I saw a simple picture of Nature’s painting 
once, which has returned to my memory again 
and again, and if it could be put on a canvas 
or fastened in a poem it would forever remain 
a masterpiece of art. And yet it was nothing 
but a green heron standing in the swift shallow 
current of a brook with the diamond-bright 
wavelets breaking around its slender legs and 
a tuft of water-grass trembling beside it. I 
was lying idly enough, at full length on the 
brook’s bank, so that beyond the bird, as I 
gazed, opened a fairy-like landscape, over 
which a gentle breeze was blowing with an 
effect wholly indescribable, shaking tall flags 
and tossing the dragon-flies about in the sun- 
shine. The whole effect was cooling and tran- 
quillizing, with a subtle hint in it of a land 
somewhere just out of reach where one might 
dream the lotos-dream forever. 
Now, a good artist might have easily painted 
the little scene so far as painting usually goes ; 
but it would have required such genius as is 
yet to be born to imprison in the sketch the 
hint of what seemed to lie just beyond the 
