\ 
HOURS OF SPRING. 7 
thumb, these atoms of quartz, and sunlight shining all 
that time, and flowers blooming and life glowing in all, 
myriads of living things, from the cold still limpet 
on the rock to the burning, throbbing heart of man. 
Sometimes I found them among the sand of the heath, 
the sea of golden brown surging up yellow billows six 
feet high about me, where the dry lizard hid, or basked, 
of kin, too, to old time. Or the rush of the sea wave 
brought them to me, wet and gleaming, up from the 
depths of what unknown Past? where they nestled in the 
root crevices of trees forgotten before Egypt. The living 
mind opposite the dead pebble—did you ever consider 
the strange and wonderful problem there? Only the 
thickness of the skin of the hand between them. The 
chief use of matter is to demonstrate to us the existence 
of the soul. The pebble-stone tells me I am a soul be- 
cause I am not that that touches the nerves of my hand. 
We are distinctly two, utterly separate, and shall never 
come together. The little pebble and the great sun over- 
head—millions of miles away: yet is the great sun no 
more distinct and apart than this which I can touch. 
Dull-surfaced matter, like a polished mirror, reflects back 
thought to thought’s self within. ; 
I listened to the sweet-briar wind this morning ; but 
for weeks and weeks the stark black oaks stood straight 
out of the snow as masts of ships with furled sails frozen 
and ice-bound in the haven of the deep valley. Each 
was visible to the foot, set in the white slope, made 
individual in the wood by the brilliance of the back- 
ground. Never was such a long winter. For fully two 
months they stood in the snow in black armour of iron 
bark unshaken, the front rank of the forest army that 
would not yield to the northern invader. Snow in broad 
flakes, snow in semi-flakes, snow raining down in frozen 
