THOUGHTS FROM WRITINGS 



life always, even in the dry fir-cone that 

 looks so brown and sapless. — 'The 

 Open Air ' : Out of Doors in February. 



BESIDE the moist clods the slen- 

 der flags arise filled with the 

 sweetness of the earth. Out of 

 the darkness under — that darkness 

 which knows no day save when the 

 ploughshare opens its chinks — they 

 have come to the light. To the light 

 they have brought a colour which will 

 attract the sunbeams from now till 

 harvest. They fall more pleasantly on 

 the corn, toned, as if they mingled with 

 it. Seldom do we realise that the world 

 is practically no thicker to us than the 

 print of our footsteps on the path. Upon 

 that surface we walk and act our comedy 

 of life, and what is beneath is nothing 

 to us. But it is out from that under- 

 world, from the dead and the unknown, 

 from the cold moist ground, that these 



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