A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



about that which such a man would unconsciously 

 appropriate. Even Poe, with all his genius, failed 

 to lie on his stomach and look into the grasses of 

 the field. His Raven and his Annabel Lee are 

 not arrayed like one of these. Fancy him writ 

 ing the &quot; Flower de Luce &quot; of Longfellow, or the 

 &quot; Chambered Nautilus &quot; of Holmes, or the &quot; Water 

 Fowl &quot; of Bryant. If he had been guided by the 

 implicit faith of the boy, he would have taken the 

 advice of the guide in Dante s &quot; Inferno &quot; when 

 he came to some of the horrors, &quot; Look and pass 

 on.&quot; 



Besides all other experiences there was one 

 that I cannot help making some mention of. It 

 was purely psychic and confidential. I found 

 that Charlie was more or less of a telephone into 

 eternity. Do not misunderstand me. In the 

 breaks of our existence all of us come at some 

 time to that tower in the valley of desolation 

 where faith has run a wire out into the shoreless 

 leagues. In all the ages man has come there 

 and sent his messages out and waited for answers. 

 But none ever came. His cry was for &quot;the touch 

 of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that 

 is still.&quot; He must have missed the right instru 

 ment. I only know that the sound of the voice 

 came plainly back to me at times ; that I often 

 felt the touch of the vanished hand, and some 

 thing out of eternity looked through the near-by 

 windows of another soul. I have listened to it 

 in playtime. The inflections, the ineffable some 

 thing was unmistakable, so that the voice was 



