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^^ 



THROUGH many happy joumeyings, through com- 

 munings with nature here and pleasant converse 

 with nature-loving humans there, I feel the constant 

 humming of two motifs as of an invisible orchestra, playing 

 sans doute to countless others besides myself, but playing 

 withal so softly and intimately that it might almost seem that 

 they make music for one only at a time. And the two or- 

 chestral themes, ringing now in melodious antiphonal and 

 now in harmonic chorus are ever the same to me, — "the 

 WONDER OF creation" and "the romance of creation's 

 MAN. " Being however but an indifferent theologian, I have 

 restricted my notes to the man-motif and here we have, 

 blown from the four winds of heaven, classic and legend, 

 romance and fable, twined about the dearest flowers of our 

 gardens and hillsides. 



And if I have linked them all together in a story and if, 

 as the guest-book foretold, I have conceived and simg to you 

 a song of my own now and then as an interlude, it has been, 

 let me hope, not amiss. The odds and ends, scraps and vi- 



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