plants flowerless, as he did the ferns, or he could have dyed all flow- 
ers with one pigment, or he might have left odors out in compounding 
his flowers and leaves and grasses and earths; but thanks to his good 
Providence, he forgot not the sandalwood’s clinging fragrance, nor the 
scents of roses and wheat stubble nor new-mown hay nor green wal- 
nuts, nor forgot to make dews at night, to distill odors from woodlands 
and plains, nor neglected that sweet inrush of earth and air smells 
which puffs in the face some unexpected morning and sings to the 
soul—Springtime! God ransacked his treasuries when he made this 
world; nor was it in spirit of haste or obliviousness, when, on the day 
he finished the building of his world he said, ‘I have found all things 
good.’’ If the wind fans a hot cheek to blow its fever out, or fills the 
flapping sails of innumerable ships, | count that to be a lesser blessing 
than its gift of touch and music. The wind’s touch can be as tender 
as a loving woman’s caress and its music as gentle and sweet as mem- 
ories fetched from a happy past. To miss the blowing of the trumpets 
of the winds is to suffer loss. The wind’s voices are inexpressible 
music. I love their laughter and their weeping, their wailing of autumn 
and their leaf-patter, like the sound of spring showers. | was reared in 
Kansas, where winds have what some esteem a vicious supremacy, but 
to me their trumpetings and stormy chargings to and fro, their shrill 
falsettos through leafless trees; their summer sweep, which wrecks 
the fleets of clouds as if they were ships blown on ragged ocean rocks; 
their whine at the casement, like a patient dog pleading for its master, 
and their wholly tender touch of a June evening wind—I love them all. 
Not one will I willingly leave out of my memory or deny room at the 
fireside of my life. They are part of me. It may be because my 
father's folk for unknown generations were sea captains and lovers of 
the raging waters, tempest-swirled and were all drowned at sea, that 
tempests are mixed with my blood and are part of my soul's dear 
possessions. But certain | am that winds do not vex me and that I 
am lonely apart from them as missing one of my home folks. Their 
ardor warms my spirit and their gentle quiet is like a call to prayer. 
Jesus loved the winds, and, as | think, tore a scrap 
from the book of his boyhood when he said (he 
was thinking of Nazareth when he spoke), “The 
wind bloweth where it listeth"—those un- 
certain, unmannerly, brusque winds, which 
betimes whipped up Esdraelon’s loitering 
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