278 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



like to the far horizon, just as I hungered for the blue 

 heave of Greylock. I once spent several days in camp 

 in the tumbled wilderness under Carrigain, with a man 

 who all his life had followed the sea. The early sun- 

 sets and the late dawns, the constant sense of vast rock 

 walls confronting the vision and cutting off half the sky, 

 depressed him. He was homesick for the sea. God for 

 him, I suppose, dwelt on the deep and spoke in the wail 

 of the wind through the rigging, or roared with the voice 

 of many waters. Does He speak to the prairie boy in 

 the rustle of the endless miles of corn? Does He dwell 

 in that pearly cloud which hangs forever above the far 

 horizon? Is His dwelling this pervasive immensity of 

 space? Somewhere He dwells for each of us, for man 

 perishes who does not find for Him a habitation; but 

 where it is depends, after all, on habit on so simple a 

 thing as the silent influence in early years of external 

 sights and sounds. I was born near the hills and 

 nurtured on their breast, and I am never happy long 

 away from them. The most beautiful thing in the world 

 to me is Mount Moosilauke; and the loveliest music ever 

 made is the song of the hermit thrushes on the slopes of 

 Cannon when the sunset shadows are creeping amid the 

 hemlock aisles and far below on an upland pasture the 

 cow-bells tinkle as the herd winds down to the valley. 

 Were I a psalmist, from such things would my meta- 

 phors be drawn, and I would bid the world once more 

 lift up its eyes unto the hills. But there may be psalm- 



