A GARDEN DIARY 219 
AvuGusT 6, 1900. 
FEW of the minor experiences of life are, I 
think, more consoling than to come across 
some small link in the chain of natural law, 
over the right connections of which one has long 
groped blindly. Such a little bit of good luck 
befell me only yesterday. In itself it was what 
one calls the veriest trifle; simply a question as 
to the relationship of certain obscure organisms, 
profoundly uninteresting to the world at large. 
To myself it seemed, for a while at all events, to 
be of some little consequence. It imparted—for 
fully ten minutes—an entirely new impression of 
a vast, a peaceful, and a most orderly progress. 
It seemed to open up vistas into the perfection, 
into the breadth, no less than the complexity, 
of that great scheme of Life, of which we our- 
selves form a part. It came as a sudden vision, 
as a conception of possibilities—I hardly know 
what to call it—the vividness of which it would 
be difficult without exaggeration to put into 
words. 
