HIGH WINDS 



freedom. We had come out of the game into 

 gray peace with &quot; sunny spots of greenery,&quot; where 

 the moss was still lush, and Griselle sat down on 

 the root of a beech tree, and smilingly pretended 

 to adjust the awryness of Charlie s hair and apparel ; 

 but as she kept him in front of her, I suspected 

 that she wished to adjust herself, so I walked in 

 another direction, and bawled out a stave of 

 &quot; The Brave Old Oak,&quot; one of Charlie s favourite 

 songs, while he, with the example of the wind 

 still before him, tried to get her to bowl after him 

 as if he were a leaf. 



Give any man of my age trees enough, I care 

 not what the season may be, and in half an hour 

 he will create a Rosalind to fit them, and if he has 

 a jack-knife, he will carve her name in the bark. 

 I suppose Nature is always trying to be Shak- 

 sperian, even in her sly moments ; certainly it 

 looks like it to a man of sensibility, and it is in 

 her interludes that she approaches nearest to her 

 human master. Always he stepped out of the 

 gusts of human passion to lilt. You feel his 

 muscles relax and his wing unfold. It is when 

 his muse pushes the playwright aside and touches 

 the strings herself that you listen hushed. The 

 gusts go by overhead, and he stops before Dun 

 can s castle to pay a tribute to* the &quot; temple- 

 haunting martlet,&quot; or drags Hamlet out of his 

 whirlwind to the window to eulogize the &quot;brave 

 o erhanging firmament.&quot; 



De Quincey spent a great deal of analytic 

 talent upon the interruption of &quot;the knocking at 



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