A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



more than a mere figure of speech. It was a pene 

 trative and pervasive fact that had gilded the 

 humilities of our home, just as I had seen the sun 

 rise kindle the furrows and emblazon the drudgery 

 of the fields. Breakfast in a hovel had taken on, 

 when she was there, that kind of sparkle one 

 meets in the early morning before the dew is 

 gone. She simply poured herself over it. A few 

 magic passes in the little kitchen, some kind of 

 sibylline trolling in low tones, and presto, Indian 

 meal came out in golden chunks and was cut up 

 by the alchemist into steaming ingots, and we 

 heaped the butter on it and silently felt that it 

 was driving the shadows out of us. The coffee 

 was never so yellow when we tried our chemistry 

 on it. It would not exhale. We did our best on 

 those mornings, but there was always a little dis 

 tress of human hurry in it, and we ran against 

 each other and dropped things, and the yellow 

 dog, distressed at the confusion, got between our 

 legs, and I think sometimes we kicked at her. 



O y 



When we arrived at the vital point of sitting down 

 and taking a long breath preparatory to eating, it 

 always seemed that the preparation before and the 

 rehabilitation afterward made the eating a little 

 overestimated. But when Griselle had been there, 

 we sat breathless and saw all the little contempti 

 ble trivialities of domesticity fall into line like so 

 many dwarf courtiers, and results danced after her 

 like so many notes under magic fingers, melting 

 into melody. 



Three, four days went by, and the Robinson 

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