232 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



enough as may once in a long while 

 happen, you feel things that tongue of man 

 never uttered. Life itself is less sweet. 

 Now and then, as I listen, I seem to hear a 

 voice saying, " Blessed are the dead." I 

 foretaste a something better than this sepa- 

 rate, contracted, individual state of being 

 which we call life, and to which in ordinary 

 moods we cling so fondly. To drop back 

 into the Universal, to lose life in order to 

 find it, this would be heaven ; and for the 

 moment, with this musical woodsy silence in 

 my ears, I am almost there. Yet it must 

 be that I express myself awkwardly, for I 

 am never so much a lover of earth as at such 

 a moment. Life is good. I feel it so now. 

 Fair are the white birch stems ; fair are the 

 gray-green poplars. This is my third day, 

 and my spirit is getting in tune. 



Tn the white-pine grove, where a few 

 small birds are stirring noiselessly among 

 the upper branches, my attention is taken 

 by clusters of the ghostly, colorless plant 

 which men know as the Indian pipe (its 

 real name, of necessity, is quite beyond hu- 

 man ken) ; the flowers, every head bowed, 



