28 Musings by Camp- Fire a^id Wayside 



to repeat the long-drawn, solemn sounds which the 

 winds drew from the trees, and he built his organs 

 of pipes and reeds, carefully feeling his way back 

 to the melodies of Paradise. When the great mas- 

 ters, Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner, rose and 

 began to fill their higher octaves with bird-song 

 and the flutter of wings, the human soul was enrapt- 

 ured. When the lost chord of Paradise had been 

 found again, it was immediately recognized by all 

 the finer souls which heard it, for the human spirit, 

 passing down from form to form and from life to 

 life, does not forget, though it may not have had a 

 reminder for a thousand years. 



A soul that is open to the influences of nature 

 feels the presence of the divine in the forests. 

 When the clamor and jar and discordant noises of 

 the city are shut out, one feels that he has passed 

 into another world, which contains no point of 

 resemblance or reminder of the one he has left; 

 that he is in another atmosphere, not only in its 

 superior freshness and purity, but also that infused 

 into it is a purer element, a spiritual pervasion, 

 which the soul breathes as the nostrils do the 

 material atmosphere. There is an uplift, an inspi- 

 ration, a joy which he never experiences in the city. 

 This is not an individual, but a common, experi- 

 ence. There is a reason, therefore, in nature and 

 in the constitution of man, why trees should have 

 always been associated with imaginings of the super- 

 natural, and why these aisles, or cathedrals, built 



