I3 8 UNDER THE TREES. 



incomprehensible. It is enough to say that I had 

 parted with all my limitations, and freed myself 

 from all my bonds of habit and ignorance and prej 

 udice ; I was no longer worn and spent with work 

 and emotion and impression ; I was no longer 

 prisoned within the iron bars of my own person 

 ality. I was as free as the bird ; I was as little 

 bound to the past as the cloud that an hour ago 

 was breathed out of the heart of the sea ; I was as 

 joyous, as unconscious, as wholly given to the rapt 

 ure of the hour as if I had come into a world 

 where freedom and joy were an inalienable and 

 universal possession. I did not speculate about 

 the great fleecy clouds that moved like galleons in 

 the ethereal sea above me ; I simply felt their 

 celestial beauty, the radiancy of their unchecked 

 movement, the freedom and splendor of the inex 

 haustible play of life of which they were part. I 

 asked no questions of myself about the great trees 

 that wove the garments of the magical forest about 

 me ; I felt the stir of their ancient life, rooted in 

 the centuries that had left no record in that place 

 save the added girth and the discarded leaf ; I had 

 no thought about the bird whose note thrilled the 

 forest save the rapture of pouring out without 

 measure or thought the joy that was in me ; I felt 

 the vast irresistible movement of life rolling, wave 

 after wave, out of the unseen seas beyond, obliter 

 ating the faint divisions by which, in this working 

 world, we count the days of our toil, and making 



