70 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



greener towards the house, and more brown-tinted on 

 the margin of the strawberry bed, because towards the 

 house the shadow rested longest. By the strawberries 

 the fierce sunlight burned them. 



The sunlight put out the books I brought into it 

 just as it put out the fire on the hearth indoors. The 

 tawny flames floating upwards could not bite the 

 crackling sticks when the full beams came pouring on 

 them. Such extravagance of light overcame the little 

 fire till it was screened from the power of the heavens. 

 So here in the shadow of the American crab tree the 

 light of the sky put out the written pages. For this 

 beautiful and wonderful light excited a sense of some 

 likewise beautiful and wonderful truth, some unknown 

 but grand thought hovering as a swallow above. The 

 swallows hovered and did not alight, but they were 

 there. An inexpressible thought quivered in the azure 

 overhead ; it could not be fully grasped, but there was 

 a sense and feeling of its presence. Before that mere 

 sense of its presence the weak and feeble pages, the 

 small fires of human knowledge, dwindled and lost 

 meaning. There was something here that was not in 

 the books. In all the philosophies and searches of 

 mind there was nothing that could be brought to face 

 it, to say, This is what it intends, this is the explana- 

 tion of the dream. The very grass-blades confounded 

 the wisest, the tender lime leaf put them to shame, the 

 grasshopper derided them, the sparrow on the wall 

 chirped his scorn. The books were put out, unless a 

 screen were placed between them and the light of the 

 sky — that is, an assumption, so as to make an artificial 

 mental darkness. Grant some assumptions — that is, 



