WOOD SILENCE 65 



How still and happy the boulders look, 

 with friendly bushes and ferns gathered 

 about them, and parti-colored lichens giving 

 them tones of beauty ! Men call them dead. 

 " Dead as a stone," has even passed into a 

 proverb. "Stone dead," we say. But I 

 doubt. They would smile, inwardly, I think 

 to hear us. We have small idea, the wisest 

 of us, what we mean by life and death. Men 

 who hurry to and fro, scraping money to- 

 gether or chasing a ball, consider themselves 

 alive. The trees, and even the stones, know 

 better. 



Yes, that is a crow, cawing ; but far, far 

 off. Distance softens sound as it softens 

 the landscape, and as time, which is only 

 another kind of distance, softens grief. A 

 cricket at my elbow plays his tune, irreg- 

 ularly and slowly. The low temperature 

 slackens his tempo. Now he is done. There 

 is only the stirring of leaves. Some of the 

 birch leaves, I see, are already turning yel- 

 low, and once in a while, as the wind whis- 

 pers to one of them, it lets go its hold and 

 drops. " Good-by," I seem to hear it say ; 

 " my summer is done." How tenderly the 



