A GARDEN DIARY 219 



AUGUST 6, 1900. 



of the minor experiences of life are, I 

 think, more consoling than to come across 

 some small link in the chain of natural law, 

 over the right connections of which one has long 

 groped blindly. Such a little bit of good luck 

 befell me only yesterday. In itself it was what 

 one calls the veriest trifle ; simply a question as 

 to the relationship of certain obscure organisms, 

 profoundly uninteresting to the world at large. 

 To myself it seemed, for a while at all events, to 

 be of some little consequence. It imparted for 

 fully ten minutes an entirely new impression of 

 a vast, a peaceful, and a most orderly progress. 

 It seemed to open up vistas into the perfection, 

 into the breadth, no less than the complexity, 

 of that great scheme of Life, of which we our- 

 selves form a part. It came as a sudden vision, 

 as a conception of possibilities I hardly know 

 what to call it the vividness of which it would 

 be difficult without exaggeration to put into 

 words. 



