THE EDGE OF NIGHT 75 



shadows and softly covers the fields. We do not 

 stir. An hour passes. We do not stir. Not to 

 stir is the lesson — one of the majors in this grad- 

 uate course with the toad. 



The dusk thickens. The grasshoppers begin to 

 strum ; the owl slips out and drifts away ; a whip- 

 poorwill drops on the bare knoll near me, clucks 

 and shouts and shouts again, his rapid repetition 

 a thousand times repeated by the voices that call 

 to one another down the long empty aisles of the 

 swamp ; a big moth whirs about my head and is 

 gone ; a bat flits squeaking past; a firefly blazes, 

 but is blotted out by the darkness, only to blaze 

 again, and again be blotted, and so passes, his 

 tiny lantern flashing into a night that seems the 

 darker for the quick, unsteady glow. 



We do not stir. It is a hard lesson. By all my 

 other teachers I had been taught every manner of 

 stirring, and this unwonted exercise of being still 

 takes me where my body is weakest, and it puts 

 me painfully out of breath in my soul. " Wisdom 

 is the principal thing," my other teachers would 

 repeat, "therefore get wisdom, but keep exceed- 

 ingly busy all the time. Step lively. Life is short. 

 There are only twenty-four hours to the day. The 



