40 In Apathetic August 



such a word as " unmeaning," as if we were 

 lords of creation and not creation lord of us. 

 Nature has little patience with mere fuss and 

 feathers. If there is a great noise, there is a 

 great cause behind it. We can publish our 

 own littleness by pleading inability to ex- 

 plain the events of a passing day, but be cau- 

 tious of criticism of superior power. Yet it 

 is as bad to underestimate our strength. We 

 often can do more than we think lies within 

 our powers. We can learn more than our 

 neighbors if we adopt better methods, nor 

 fall by the way because so many gems of 

 truth are in a matrix from which no human 

 patience can extraft them. Have we culti- 

 vated our patience until it has acquired the 

 acme of its possible growth ? 



How very silent is this August morning ! 

 yet but a slight change in position, and I 

 find it sound-full. Be not deceived by ap- 

 pearances. How deserted the woods and 

 meadows, hill-side and upland fields ! Are 

 they ? Your eyes may be more at fault than 

 you suspect, and while you step so firmly 

 forward you may really be playing blind- 

 man's-buff with the landscape. As I pass it 

 by a field sparrow rises from his feast of seeds 



