A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



They beat all day against our panes, blurring 

 them with running films, tapping on our shingles 

 with little bills, and sometimes reaching our wood 

 fire, which spat at them like a cat. I had, in 

 anticipation, dreaded this episode, but now that 

 it had come, the dreariness, like the other dis 

 comforts of our life, melted away before a new 

 mental attitude. 



It is quite impossible for me to tell you why 

 the leaden prospect, with rain, rain, rain, falling 

 as far as the eye could reach, running down the 

 tree trunks all day, and gurgling somewhere in 

 spasmodic rivulets, should all at once present 

 some slumberous depths that defied scrutiny, but 

 that cajoled one s mood. I sat there before my 

 fire, a veritable eremite, listening to a broken 

 spout, and it reminded me of the oboes in some 

 symphony I had heard. Perhaps it was the 

 symphony of Beethoven s which Coleridge said 

 was &quot; like a funeral procession in deep purple.&quot; 

 Not that the sound of the spout was at all like 

 the oboe but what was the oboe like, or the 

 symphony itself for that matter ? I have never 

 seen a funeral procession in deep purple. I sup 

 pose it occasionally sweeps by on the invisible ele 

 ments. Out of the gray desolate hours I heard 

 Griselle saying again, &quot;A nor easter is coming 

 to fill up the ponds.&quot; Must the ponds be filled 

 like the granaries ? Was this a harvest duty of 

 the skies ? It really seemed so to me at that 

 moment. 



What did men do when they were shut up by 

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