A GARDEN DIARY 25 
organic forces of the world, what a prodigious 
amount of energy here too comes into play! 
Nature everywhere eternally building up, and 
with apparently no blind hand, but with a most 
clear, definite, and shaping policy. It is good 
for us to escape now and then out of our own 
hot and fussy little rooms, into these larger, 
cooler spaces; yet, if a wholesome, it cannot be 
said to be entirely a gratifying experience. For 
how soon, even in the simplest of such matters, 
does one arrive, like the people in the Pelgrim’s 
Progress at a place called “Stop”? How soon 
does thought practically cease, and one remains 
dumb and gasping, like some poor dull beast, 
in a mere, vacant-eyed daze of wonder? “The 
mind of man”—it was one who knew what he 
was talking about that said it—‘‘is an indifferent 
sort of musical instrument, with a certain range 
of notes, beyond which, upon both sides, there 
is an infinitude of silence.” 
