66 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



of the perfect whirl, the perpetual, invisible, un- 

 timable. 



Hence the apple tree, the owls, the illusions, 

 the lost hours — the neglect of fortune and of 

 soul ! But then you may worship nature and still 

 find your way to church ; you may be intensely 

 interested in the life of an old apple tree and still 

 cultivate your next-door neighbor, still earn all 

 the fresh air and bread and books that your chil- 

 dren need. 



The knoll yonder may be a kind of High 

 Place, and its old apple tree a kind of altar for 

 you when you had better not go to church, when 

 your neighbor needs to be let alone, when your 

 children are in danger of too much bread and of 

 too many books — for the time when you are in 

 need of that something which comes only out of 

 the quiet of the fields at the close of day. 



"But what is it?" you ask. "Give me its 

 formula." I cannot. Yet you need it and will get 

 it — something that cannot be had of the day, 

 something that Matthew Arnold comes very near 

 suggesting in his lines : — 



The evening comes, the fields are still. 

 The tinkle of the thirsty rill, 



