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children are going to sleep now and we must not disturb 

 them until they have been well refreshed. Do you remember 

 the pretty Eastern conceit from the Sanskrit of the Hito- 

 padesa where the Brahmin Kapila speaks comfort to holy 

 Kaundinya over the death of his son whom Slowcoil the aged 

 serpent had just bitten? It is one of the few cases where the 

 mysterious Hindu mind can be followed by an Occidental 

 and achieves much in these simple lines about sleep and 

 death : 



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Weep not! Life the hired nurse is 



Holding us a little space; 

 Death the Mother, who doth take us 



Back into our proper place." 



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Thus we must think of all sleep in Nature. So even when 

 winter comes, Earth, the mother, takes back into her keeping 

 the flowers she has loaned awhile to Ufe during the summer 

 and which she will loan again as long as summers shall come. 

 ") Only one season then remains of the four, — the winter 

 in which gardens and meadows and fields and forests, and 

 even the little fiurry things sleep. And winter is now upon us. 

 The birds have long since flown, the trees wave their naked , 

 arms at us like the weird spectres they are, all the tiny \ 

 things that squeak and hum and chirp and buzz are stilled I J 

 and the garden would indeed be desolate were it not for the 

 soft mantle of downy snow which pillows all things so gently. 

 As the Psalmist says. He, indeed "giveth snow like wool." 



Once more you will come to the garden before the year 



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