36 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



memory. The scene is dim in the distance of 

 threescore years. I was seated with my father in 

 the open farm-wagon going home. The evening 

 had closed down and the road lay through stretches 

 of the original forest. He told me a story of perse- 

 cution which filled my young heart with indignation 

 and revenge. "That was years ago, my son," he 

 said, "and I have watched the whip of God as the 

 years went by. I saw its blows falling and falling 

 continually, and it never ceased till the last man of 

 them was lashed out of the world. " My father's 

 words are, in my memory, like a torch illumining 

 the immediately surrounding scene. What went 

 before and what followed after are in oblivion. 

 The whip of God! And I, too, have seen it falling 

 and falling. "With what measure ye mete it shall 

 be measured to you again. " Stripe for stripe, blow 

 for blow, measure for measure. Whether God's 

 whip shall be a rod of chastisement, wielded in 

 love, or a scourge of scorpions lashing men out of 

 the world, it is for those to choose upon whom it 

 falls. When God marked Cain, he did not throw 

 the brand away. 



In solitude one becomes absorbed in the small 

 things around him. No phenomenon, however 

 trivial, fails to attract his attention — the wind, 

 weather, clouds, and all forms of animal and vege- 

 table life — these are his companions, and he invests 

 them, or rather he discovers that they are invested 

 and permeated, with something above the material. 



