CHAPTER XVHI 

 NATURE AND THE PSALMIST 



HOW much of the influence of early environ- 

 ment, of those habituated reactions which com- 

 prise for each one of us the iron ring of his destiny, 

 there is in even our deeper attitude toward the 

 external world toward what we call Nature! Not 

 long ago I spent many weeks in the prairie coun- 

 try of the West, a sense of oppression constantly in- 

 creasing in weight upon my spirit. Those endless, 

 level plains! Those roads that stretched without a 

 break to infinity! A house, a group of barns, a fruit 

 orchard, now and then a clump of hardwoods, alone 

 broke the endless, flat monotony of snow-covered 

 fields no, not fields, but infinitudes where a single 

 furrow could put a girdle about an entire township in 

 my home land! My soul hungered for a hill; my heart 

 craved, with a dull longing, the sight of a naked birch 

 tree flung aloft against the winter sky. Back through 

 the endless plains of Illinois the train crawled, away 

 from the setting sun. But the next daylight disclosed 

 the gentle, rolling slopes of the Mohawk Valley, and 

 before many hours had passed the Berkshire Hills 



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