FROM A BERKSHIRE CABIN 175 



cliffs and its great hemlocks up to the blue sky, 

 where a cloud dome rides. Looking east through 

 the tracery of tree-tops rising from the base of the 

 cliff below me, I can see out over the valley, with 

 its green fields, its road ribbons, its distant white 

 spire, to the line of dreaming hills that billows along 

 the far horizon. A white butterfly flits silently 

 against the velvet, feathery-shadowed bank of hem- 

 locks. In the cleft of a rock a single fern frond, 

 stirred by an invisible wind, waves excitedly, as if 

 it were beckoning to somebody. A long way off, 

 far up the steep mountain, a hermit-thrush sud- 

 denly sings once and then is silent dreaming, 

 perhaps, of the vanished June. In the valley a 

 cowbell tinkles, silvery and sweet. I can hear a 

 little girl calling a dog. The hemlocks are whisper- 

 ing together; they talk softly of their sister, the sea. 

 Peace and loveliness enfold me, and my soul is 

 glad; it comes forth to meet this loveliness and in 

 the meeting to find happiness. You, who chance to 

 read, will know exactly what I mean, though my 

 words have been clumsy. Your soul, too, goes out 

 to such glad meetings. If you and I, then, are of 

 such stuff, capable of such delicate delights, if man 

 is so far attuned to loveliness, what means this red 

 carnage of the world, this bloodiest and most shock^ 

 ing of all human paradoxes? I am thinking now of 

 the men of the offending~nation. Just beyond my 

 cabin is a hickory-tree. I can see the nuts forming. 

 As I look at it, a tune creeps into my head, and, 

 closing my eyes 'while the wind in the hemlocks 

 seems to play the rippling accompaniment, I hear 

 the incomparable loveliness of "Die Nussbaum," a 



