THE RETURN OF THE EXILES 



never before heard in the soft procession of the 

 universes ; faint, kindly voices reaching up from 

 the lowliest processes, trying to speak of kinship 

 and fatherhood. There are new and tiny links 

 far down the inscrutable depths, and they glitter 

 in the gloom with threads of promise, forever 

 weaving the continuity and indestructibility of life 

 in a majestic synthesis. 



I think it is an unforced similitude to say that 

 I came to Nature very much as a recreant son is 

 carried on a litter to his old mother. I had a 

 generous contempt for the &quot;old woman &quot; who did 

 not know as much as I did. But her homely 

 balms put me on my feet. I grew insensibly to 

 perceive that some bereavements are not blows 

 but benisons ; and as my physical system re 

 adjusted itself, my moral apprehension took on 

 a keener edge. That is all. 



All that I have been telling here took place 

 well along into February. The Doctor went 

 back, and there were days of dull imprisonment 

 when we were encompassed by the acrid storms 

 of the season. Rain and snow and sleet ; with the 

 thermometer lurking stubbornly at zero, and the 

 monotony of it all becoming unbearable. But let 

 me say without any boasting that I was strangely 

 cheerful, if not jolly, under it all with some 

 kind of inner complacency that was like a new 

 vital spring. Something had gone out of my 

 life, but the vacuum was filled by something new 

 that had come into it. What it was, I can hardly 

 find words to tell. &quot; When the spring comes, we 



