A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



&quot; I don t know why, but it put me in mind 

 of a day in September. I suppose those old 

 prophets lived in a kind of autumn of the soul. 

 Did you never have a thought rustle like the 

 dead leaves ? &quot; 



The Doctor and I sat down on a sloping rock, 

 eating bread and butter. Jack Horner was a 

 pessimist compared with us. To be able to eat 

 bread and butter at all was one of the victories of 

 the natural over the artificial man, but to eat it 

 voraciously and want more seemed to strike the 

 Doctor as a moral victory. There was only one 

 higher plane, he thought, for me, and it was to be 

 able to eat mush and milk with joy and thank 

 fulness. 



The beautiful mountain stream ran swirlingly 

 but softly in front of us, weaving and melting into 

 confluent and vanishing curves, and making an 

 intoxicating chromotype of colour, as it swept in 

 under the overhanging shadows and out again 

 into the radiant sunlight, murmuring very softly 

 as if subdued to the season. Here and there a 

 cardinal-flower, that leaned over to look at itself 

 out of its own green and tangled cloister, shot 

 a spark of colour downward, and against a gnarled 

 bank the water spun silver tissues over the old 

 gold of the sand. Somewhere out of sight, we 

 could hear the muffled drum-beat of a little cas 

 cade pounding against the wet rock. That was all. 

 It was like an oboe uncertainly played. We 

 both listened. &quot; Does the stillness oppress you 

 with its melancholy?&quot; asked the Doctor. 



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