CHAPTER X. 



SILENCES OF NATURE AND LIFE. 



We sat one evening in our arbor and 

 watched with keenest interest the deepening 

 twilight overspreading earth and sky. Up 

 from the sea came a refreshing breeze. The 

 quiet, the shadows, the genial starlight were 

 just the needed conditions demanded by every 

 sense. We are learning the value of silence, a 

 difficult but important lesson. It was certainly 

 edifying to watch the changing light of the 

 passing day, the slow creeping of stealthy 

 shadows, the grotesque shapes that familiar 

 things took on and the weirdlike relations as- 

 sumed, making our garden seem so unnatural, a 

 strange field and we strangers in it. How 

 gradually every aspect was changed; all color 

 gone from grass and shrub, trees gaunt and 

 grim and threatening, fragrance scarcely 

 sensed, and every form fading into semi-dark- 

 ness. But the Silence — what a benediction I 

 How soothing the reminiscent mood, memory 

 and imagination quietly recalling and creating 

 delicate pictures, peopling them with real life 

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