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for, and when it comes is like a day of some great 

 festival and rejoicing the day when peace was 

 made, when our love was returned, when a child 

 was born to us. Such sights are like certain 

 sounds, that not only delight us with their pure 

 and beautiful quality, but wake in us feelings that 

 we cannot fathom nor analyze. They are familiar, 

 yet stranger than the strangest things, with a 

 beauty that is not of the earth, as if a loved friend, 

 long dead, had unexpectedly looked back to us 

 from heaven, transfigured. It strikes me as 

 strange that, so far as we know, the Incas were 

 the only worshipers of the rainbow. 



One evening in the autumn of the year, near the 

 town, I was witness of an extraordinary and very 

 magnificent sunset effect. The sky was clear ex- 

 cept for a few masses of cloud low down in the 

 west ; and these, some time after the sun had dis- 

 appeared, assumed more vivid and glowing col- 

 ors, while the pale yellow sky beyond became more 

 luminous and flame-like. All at once, as I stood 

 not far from the bank, looking westward across 

 the river, the water changed from green to an in- 

 tense crimson hue, this extending on both hands 

 as far as I could see. The tide was running out, 

 and in the middle of the river, where the surface 

 was roughened into waves by the current, it quiv- 

 ered and sparkled like crimson flame, while near 

 the opposite shore, where rows of tall Lombardy 

 poplars threw their shadow on the surface, it was 

 violet-colored. This appearance lasted for five 



