A MEMORY OF SUMMER. 109 



a brief summer in my study. When one goes back 

 to the woods and streams after long separation and 

 absorption in books and affairs, he misses some 

 thing which once thrilled and inspired him. The 

 meadows are unchanged, but the light that touched 

 them illusively, but with a lasting and incommuni 

 cable beauty, is gone ; the woodlands are dim and 

 shadowy as of old, but they are vacant of the pres 

 ence that once filled them. There is something 

 painfully disheartening in coming back to Nature 

 and finding one s self thus unwelcomed and uncared 

 for, and in the first moment of disappointment an 

 unspoken accusation of change and coldness lies 

 in the heart. The change is not in Nature, how 

 ever ; it is in ourselves. &quot; The world is too much 

 with us.&quot; Not until its strife and tumult fade into 

 distance and memory will those finer senses, dulled 

 by contact with a meaner life, restore that which 

 we have lost. After a little some such thought as 

 this comes to us, and day after day we haunt the 

 silent streams and the secret places of the forest ; 

 waiting, watching, unconsciously bringing ourselves 

 once more into harmony with the great, rich world 

 around us, we forget the tumult out of which we 

 have come, a deep peace possesses us, and in its 

 unbroken quietness the old sights and sounds 

 return again. Youth, faith, hope, and love spring 

 again out of a soil which had begun to deny them 

 sustenance ; old dreams mingle with our waking 

 hours ; the old-time channels of joy, long silent 



