A HALO OF MOONLIGHT. 25 



Tuesday, August 4. At 5:15 A. M. I have 

 just finished washing my breakfast dishes. The 

 smoke from the remnants of my fire is still 

 curling lazily upward through the oaken 

 branches and uniting with the mists from the 

 stream give the latter a hue more blue than 

 gray. This mixture of mist and smoke hangs 

 in cloud-like form above the pools of water and 

 follows the windings of the stream both up and 

 down the valley. As I was sipping my last 

 quaff of hot water the first beams of the sun 

 were visible above the ridge to the east. It has 

 not yet appeared above the treetops on the 

 ridge but its rays have covered the slopes across 

 the valley to the westward with a, flood of 

 golden glory. 



No painter can give to sunlight or moonlight 

 that softness, that quality of ethereal loveliness 

 which it really possesses. Last night the moon, 

 half full, shed its halo over my tent and the 

 trees cast their shadows as in mid-afternoon. 

 The light of the moon itself, as seen from this 

 knoll, seems many fold brighter than that 

 which falls from it upon the earth. A strange, 

 cold, lifeless object, that moon, forever revolv- 

 ing about our mother yet held ever just so far 

 from her by that greatest of physical forces, 

 gravitation. A great reflector placed up there 

 in the heavens to make our nights of darkness 

 more easily borne. A fortnight ago I looked 



