"Swing low, sweet chariot,Coming for to carry me home—"
"Swing low, sweet chariot,Coming for to carry me home—"
"Swing low, sweet chariot,Coming for to carry me home—"
"Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home—"
"You gwine back inter the troubled world?" said Mimy. "They say hit's awful! But, Lord! there ain't any bars ter trouble! I've seen a lot."
They walked up the river to the overseer's house, where they were made welcome by Mary Carter and small Roger, and by old Mr. Morrowcombe, who was staying over from Sunday, which was yesterday. He said, much as Mancy had said: "I'm sorry you are going! But thar! You ain't going in the old, harsh ways."
Marget, sitting beside him on the step of the porch, rested her arm upon his knee. Her brown, slender hand touched his great horny one. "Grandfather Morrowcombe!" she said. He answered her: "I see you as a nine-year-old, Marget, and I see you as a woman in Sweet Rocket Valley, and I see you as something that stands above child and woman. It isn't any more big than it is subtle-fine. It's puzzling to find words. But when I look at you and think of you I seem to hear the air stirring over the whole world. All kinds of things that I had forgotten, and all kinds of things that I have read...."
She and Anna sat for five minutes under the sycamore by the water. Returning then to Sweet Rocket, they walked in the garden that was making ready for winter. As it happened, Mrs. Cliff came this day down mountain to borrow some sugar. She sat on the steps of the back porch, in the violet light of November. "Howdy!" she said to Miss Darcy. "I'm glad you stayed on. When I come here I want to stay on, too. But thar! I take the memory of it up to my home. You wouldn't think how often thar I'm here, too!"
To-day she had a braided rug to sell, and Marget bought it. Mrs. Cliff's long, wrinkled hand put the money in her pocket. "Times isn't betterin' any, Miss Marget."
Marget laughed. "Oh, the poor old times!"
It startled Anna Darcy, too, so joyous and care-free and lilting was the voice. Mrs. Cliff stared at her. The mountain woman's face was not what one would call a cheerful one. Whoever was behind it was caught in a network of fine, anxious lines. Now these held for a perceptible moment, then faded as though the twine were mist. That one immortally youthful and insouciant looked forth as it had looked from Marget. Sun came out over meadow, plain, and hill, and Mrs. Cliff laughed. "I reckon you're right, Miss Marget! You generally are. I reckon we've seen so much that we can afford to take it tranquil—which ain't to say that we're either do-less or keerless!"
She spoke to Anna. "You remember my tellin' you about that feeling I had? I 'ain't had it full again. But I've caught glimpses of it, maybe in the day, maybe in the night. I know the minute when anything like it comes my way. When you've had a feeling like that all your life's set to feeling it again."
But Marget had taken it joyously.
When Mrs. Cliff had said good-by and gone mountainward the two, crossing the pleasant porch, entered the house. They walked from room to room, Anna's consciousness gathering each. "Any time you may feel me here!"
"We shall feel you here all the time."
They stood in the study, against the broad mantelshelf. "At first, when I thought of thisroom, I thought, 'Richard Linden's study.' But it is of and for and to both of you."
"Ah yes! To both."
She seemed to give forth light. Anna thought, "Is it only the sun shining on her?"
Later, in her own room, all packing done, dressed for her journey, Anna went and sat beside the window as she had sat the first evening at Sweet Rocket. She still heard Mimy singing, she still saw the garden, though it was dreaming now of spring. "I have been here only a month, but in it I have had years and years."
The quiet room filled with a sunny stillness, an eternal assurance. Again, as on that first evening, the mountains were here and the wind of the sea was here. Love and wisdom and power were here.
The boy Jim brought Daniel and the phaeton to the door below. Marget came for her, and they went down, and through the hall to the porch, to find there Linden and Curtin and Robert and Frances and Drew, and Zinia and Mimy, and Mancy and Tam.
Across the river, at the edge of the wood, Marget checked Daniel so that Anna might look back and see the house again, the house and the trees and the hills, and the holding arms of the mountains. "But you are to come again," said Marget. "Never part, and come again!"
"Yes, oh yes!"
The wheels turned and went on upon the Alder road. They entered the forest, old forest, great trees that sloughed their leaves again and again and again, through centuries past number, sloughed their leaves, sloughed their old bodies, made soil, and stood upon it and builded higher. Behind and in and through every stem and leaf rose the subjective forest, and behind and in and through the whole the ideal, the spiritual forest, the divine forest. Around and onward went the wheels on the leafy road. Anna sat beside Marget. The two spoke little, having now no great need of words. The light came down between bare branches. Far and near branch and blue air made a marvel of lacework. Against this pines and hemlocks stood like pyramids and pillars. Song and twitter of a month ago was not now. "The birds go south—the birds go south!" said Marget. "But there are enough left for winter company. There is a bluebird on yonder bough!"
Round went the wheels, making hardly a sound. The forest hung still, so still. For one moment, to Anna Darcy, it all went away. It wasmaya, illusion, the forest, Indian summer, this day of our Lord, the phaeton and Daniel, Sweet Rocket and Alder and New York, Marget Land and Anna Darcy. What was left was fullness of Being. Did it choose to analyze itself it might be into Power, Wisdom, and Bliss. The revealing flash went as it came, ere onecould say, It lightens!Mayaagain, Marget Land and Anna Darcy, Daniel and the phaeton, the forest, Sweet Rocket and Alder and the train to be met. But each time the sheath thinned and there was left stronger light.
The train came, the friends embraced. Anna Darcy looked from window at Marget and then at Alder, the fields and hills and rivers and mountains. The train roared through a tunnel, and when it emerged the scenery was changed. There were fields and mountains, but not these fields and mountains. "And yet they run into those. There is no impassable wall nor aching gulf. There are the finest gradations—"
Marget and Daniel and the phaeton went homeward along the Alder road.
November rains wrapped Sweet Rocket. November winds rocked and bent the trees. The world was gray, or iron-gray, with rust-hued streakings. Indoors they built larger fires.
It was five days after Anna's departure. Unless the storm held him Curtin was going on the morrow. In January his profession would take him abroad, to the nearer East. He could not tell when he would be returning.
"But Sweet Rocket goes with me!"
"Just. As all the East and you flow here."
"What kind of a general world are we coming into, Linden? What kind of a political, social, economic world? I believe that, as to much of it, Robert and Frances are far seeing. In the large, those changes are upon us, and in the large they are for the better. They are built into the road we are going. I agree, I welcome! But I would see more completely if I could."
Linden, in the cane chair by the study window, seemed to pay attention to the storm. At last he spoke. "I cannot see in detail. I think there will be a great simplification. Power out of athousand tortuous channels mingling, running broad and deep! There are signs on every side. The old banks crumble. The great sea lifts other continents."
"I see everywhere how we are seeking."
"Yes. The seeker finds, the finder seeks on, seeks farther. The great ages are ever the seekers."
"You would say it is a great age?"
"Yes. A very great one. Who is not in some way aware of it? This friction of opinion on the top is but the wildness of the outermost leaves as the strong wind blows."
"And wherever I go I shall find the seeking and the greatness?"
"The world is One," said Linden.
The storm continued. Sweet Rocket had early supper. Zinia and Mimy, with raincoats and a huge umbrella, went by the swaying, chanting orchard to their own fireside, to Sarah and Julia and Jim and Just So. The Danes and Curtin and Drew, Linden and Marget, sat or moved about in the old Sweet Rocket parlor. They might watch the storm from the windows, or they might sit by the fire. The great wind blew through Sweet Rocket Valley. They heard the stream rushing, and the trees had a voice, as though they had taken foot out of ground and were now a herd. The rain was driven against the panes, and the wind hurled dead leaves with the rain. Wall and roof and glass shut out thephysical rain, but the psychical man cognized it far and near, rain since the world began. And the fire also, and the warm room, and they in company listening to the storm. The momentary outlines shifted. There fell a sense of having done this times and times and times, a sense of hut and cave, so often, so long, in so many lands, that there was a feel of eternity about it. Rain and the cave and the fire, and the inner man still busied with his destiny! There was something that awed in the perception that ran from one to another, that held them in a swift, shimmering band. "How old—how old! How long have we done this?"
The rhythm of the storm, the rhythm of the room, the rhythm of the fire, passed into a vast, still sense of ordered movement. "Of old, and now, and to-morrow—everywhere and all time—until we return above time and place, and division is healed."
They felt a lightness, a detachment. The spirit soared with the mind and made it look.
"There is the natural man and there is the spiritual man. That last finds himself in all selves, and all selves in him. There is the spiritual man, and there is the divine man who works with power. Both are words of inclusion. It is to leave the old small I for the spiritual I, and it is to transcend the last and enter that which is above. Then is left the shrunken pond for the ocean! Only we say it upside down. Itis the ocean that overflows and drinks up the pond."
"When God enters life there will still be said I?"
"Otherwise, still pond and ocean, still separation! Who shall lose his life here shall find it. But never sink to thinking that it is what in the past we have meant when we said I! When God enters how shall he not say I? But it is the ocean now that speaks! The pond is gone."
They sat still, and the fire played and leaped.
Through the night the rain beat and the wind blew, but at dawn it cleared. There was wreckage about the world, but life laughed and took her wreckage and built with it anew. Valley, hills, and mountains gleamed like precious stones. Navies of clouds rode for a while, then melted into the deep azure. The upper sea hung so calm and clear that down through it to the earth bottom ran light that seemed intenser than the light of every day.
Curtin said good-by, and went. Marget and Linden drove him to Alder.
The river ran swollen, the road lay deep in leaves, few leaves now on the trees. The trees stood still in vast ranks. They seemed to be holding something, to be turning it over in mind. There flashed across Curtin, "Who lifts, all lifts."
"Yes!" said Marget, beside him, as though he had spoken.
It was what he carried with him from this valley.
Linden and Marget drove home through the wood. "How still it is! Barring foot and wheel on the wet leaves you would say there was no stir. We are passing pine trees. How fragrant!"
"A bluebird is watching us from a maple. Now here is the great beech. It holds its leaves, though they are brown and curled upon themselves like cocoons. The ground underneath is clean and brown. A grapevine goes over and up with those young trees. There are yet bunches of grapes and they hang so still! There are brown loops for swings for all the forest children, whether they be Indians or dryads and fauns."
"I see them," said Linden, "all the graceful, tawny forest children!"
"Here is the oak glade with the grass yet green far down it, to where hangs the purple curtain. The outstanding great roots glisten, and the moss holds the water drops. You see a long way. Yonder is tree trunk and stone, light and shadow, that looks like a hermit's cell. It is an alley for the whole Middle Ages to come riding down—for a paladin to come riding down, the Red Cross Knight, or Guyon, or Galahad, or Parsifal—or it might be Robin Hood in Lincoln green!"
"I see."
"Here are green brier and red dogwood berries,and witch-hazel with dull gold fingers. Can you hear the water?"
"Yes. Three silver threads of it, like a lute!"
"The day is a castle and a church, the day is a city and a star! Now we pass the great rock and the two hemlocks, like cathedral spires. Here are the little oaks, and there is a guess of crimson about them yet. The birch and the hickory and the tall oaks, and the tops are far and fine and melt into the sky—"
They came down to the river, and crossed. "The light washes the pillars, the cedars are little earth clouds. The arch of the sky has none, it springs clear blue. Music of home!"
"Yes. Music of home!"
After supper, with Robert and Frances and Drew they watched the fire. "Anna sends the city to us, and Curtin sends the rush of the train and the flying scenery. As we send this place and this mood and this thought to the city and the train!"
The violin bow drew across the strings. Frances played, and love and release filled the ancient room. The world entered into harmony.
The next day rose gray pearl. Linden and Drew went with the woodcutters. Marget sat at her typewriter in the study. Robert and Frances took a long walk. Three days, and they, too, must go cityward. Now they walked by the Alder road, and at the great pine took the Rock Mountain trail.
The pearly light filled the forest like a water. All sound lay subdued. When a stone rolled underfoot it was not loudly; when a branch broke it was with a slow, deliberate, musing voice. When they saw a wild thing, the wild thing had no motion of flight, but pottered stilly on upon its business of the time. "We are far away! We have crossed to another land. It is as though we died, and this is the quiet ground where we take our reckoning before we find another busy world. Oh, a busy world in each of us, and a quiet land!"
They rested upon a bowlder half sunken in brown leaves. "There is a touch of eternity about this day.... Yet in five days how busy a world for you and me!"
"Yet I love that as I love this. How happy that we are so rich!"
They sat still on the gray bowlder in the gray wood in the pearl-gray air. Minutes passed. A bird flew across the path, a gray squirrel ran up an oak. "Something is coming down the trail."
The something proved to be a man on horseback. The intervening boughs, branches, twigs, made him to be seen like a horseman behind a great window filled with small, leaded panes. He came close, and, seeing them, drew rein. "Good day!"
"Good day!"
"From Sweet Rocket?"
"Yes, from Sweet Rocket."
"Do I speak to Mr. Linden? My name is Smith—Malcolm Smith from the Reserve on Rock Mountain."
Robert gave their names. Mr. Smith said: "Have you ever seen a stiller day? It is one of the still days that set you on new action. I thought I would ride over. I want to see Drew, and there is something else—"
After a minute or two he addressed himself again to the path. "I'll go on, as I have only this afternoon and to-night. I must get back to camp to-morrow." He made no doubt, it might be noticed, of the hospitality of Sweet Rocket. "I shall see you again?"
"Yes. We shall turn presently."
They watched him along the trail until, as the figure had entered, so it vanished from the leaded window. They sat awhile longer in the gray-pearl world, and then they rose and followed the horseman down to Sweet Rocket.
Malcolm Smith and Drew had their talk, walking by the river in the still, November dusk. Drew said: "I was glad to be on Rock Mountain, and after a few months, if you will have me, I am going there again. But I am glad that I came here. I am growing to see that it is not here nor there, camp on mountain or Sweet Rocket, that a man goes to find himself. But yet there are helpers.... There's a principle of induction, don't you think, sir? Those who find start a wave of finding. The wave caught them, too. There isn't any first or last."
Turning, they saw fire gleaming through the window. "He says that we (and when he says that he means the whole of us. When he says 'I' it is the other word for 'we.' It is the Whole of the many) are growing fast to-day. Sometimes he says Evolving Life, sometimes the Principle of Integration, or the Great Synthesis. He may say Humanity Awake, or Going Home, or Realizing Deity, or Liberation in God, or Becoming Real, or Fulfilling Want, or Recollection, or Union, or the Eternal, IncludingSELF,or Love at Last. He seems to think that almost any phrase will answer if you know the thing."
Zinia's bell rang from the porch behind them. They went in to the pleasant supper table, set with wholesome, delicate bread, and fragrant coffee, cottage cheese, and baked apples and cream. The table talk was merry this evening, after the dreamy day. Supper over, all walked out to see the night, and found it clearing, with river banks of clouds and stars between like lit craft sailing, sailing. The air breathed exquisitely mild, warm to-night as early October. "Let us sit by the river and watch awhile." They took capes and coats and went down to where, before the cedars, was placed a long bench. Sitting here, though no entire constellation was visible, yet they pieced out the figures.
They sat in silence, watching the ships of the universe. At last said the visitor: "I have been thinking a good deal about you down here by this river, and about Drew, and of two or three things Mr. Curtin said when he was at camp. So I came down. I have been thinking a good deal. Look! there is Pleiades, a magic island in a sea. I have had my inklings of the way currents arise in this world. Let's grant that it is a universe of thought and will and feeling, and that, from ignoring as much as we could that fact, and then from wondering about it, and then from in some wise earning it, we begin to be it—"
"Just," said Linden. "Well?"
The other continued, "Once, when I was recovering from an illness, I found or was found by—and I don't suppose the expressions matter—"
"No. They are distinctions without a difference."
"Once, then, I walked into a state of consciousness that transcended the level that I had thought was the true level. I was there for it might be five seconds of our time. But though again in mass we parted, there remained an influence—like one of those rivers up there. The world has never since been just the old world. But the main experience did not repeat itself, though there have been times when I have met the shadows of it. Until the other night. But I will come to that presently. Though it was not repeated I have known ever since that there is a consciousness as much above our usual one as the latter is above the ape's. A consciousness that it is profoundly desirable to reach. Before that moment I was like almost any European of say 1491. During it—for that one minute—I was in America. After it, though I returned to Europe, I could say, there is America!"
"Yes. Just."
"But I had fallen out of America and I could never get quite back, though I often tried. And then the other night—"
He broke off, and seemed to ponder the sky."I rode over from Rock Mountain because the other night I had, not that first experience again, but one that was again in America—New America. From what I have heard I felt certain that this place knows these experiences. I wanted to compare, and be confirmed. So I rode over." He was speaking to Linden. "I had meant to ask to talk with you alone, but I see that there is nothing here that jars or makes it difficult. It's a good place, this bench, with the river sounding, and the clouds and the stars."
"There is just ourself here."
"I was coming down from the top of Rock. I had had a still twenty minutes there, watching the sunset. I had thought of nothing in particular, only gathered rest. I was halfway down when this torrent rose and overtook me. I stood still. I remember a pine tree, and beyond that a great wash of sky. But I—I was in the torrent that now seemed Ocean, and now seemed Air, and now was Fire. The combination called Malcolm Smith was gone into that, like rain into sea or a candle flame into sun. And yet—and that was the miracle of it—there was an I, only it was oceanic, only it was the sun! It held in a sheaf, it sucked out pith and marrow of all the small 'me's' in creation, and soared and rang, an All-Person. But what are words? If I could give you that sense—"
"Perhaps you do. As long ago we developed gesture in order faintly to understand and beat one, and then developed speech, so now the Will within is propelling and the Will within is receiving these mightier waves. I feel what you would give. Go on."
"If I could find the words! I passed into a subtle consciousness that went everywhere, and all our old time became space to it. There was motion, as of all the winds of the world brought into one current—only nor air nor fire is swift enough, vast enough! And yet you would say 'Quietude.' ... All the movements of our world penetrated, understood, furthered—all the honey fields, all the bees, all the hives—and Valhalla and Olympus and Paradise, where the honey is eaten! And it is all a figure, but what will you have! I can but stammer. I have seen home."
He rose, and walked up and down beneath the cedars. "I talk about it so calmly, and yet all that I ever believed or hoped, all that I ever thought or felt or did, is babyhood to that! I am patient, and that astonishes me; I who am back at Malcolm Smith!"
"You are not wholly back. The rising pendulum swings, but now a great part of you is above the old, lower range. And at the last not anticipation, but reality, not light of home, but home!"
The river sounded, the stars shone in the upper rivers with the cloud banks. The clouds made rivers, but, the clouds dissolved, there were nomore rivers, but Ocean, but Space, but the Eternal Fire!
"It is all I have to tell," said Smith. "It sank with long reverberations, and there was the pine tree, and the camp below, and Malcolm Smith."
They sat in silence. At last, said Linden: "America is a term of vastness. They who adventured there and arrived found all manner of experience, but all in America. They sailed in many crafts—and yet in the end all were as one ship, all being for America. They landed north or south, in varying climes; they stayed by the sea or went toward the mountains, but all in America. They met with great variety in adventure, the land being so vast and so rich in might, but all was American adventure.... So it is, I hold, with the New America, the New World now lighting the horizon. It resounds and flames thus to this one, and thus to the other one. But it resounds and flames. The Great Symphony takes in all the music. Feel it as you can, know it as you can! In proportion as you draw the breath of the All, comparisons become odious. You have access as I have access. Enter by the door of your inner nature!"
"A new man is born?"
"Yes. Everywhere. Including and transcending men. Men fading into Man, men left behind. Man moving toward his full Consciousness. What in prophecy we have called Christ."
They watched the clouds and the stars, and they saw, each of them, a new Country that was fair and strong and keen and glowing....
At last they rose and went back to the house, and by the fire listened to the violin.
Day rose in sapphire, tranquil, pure, still and sunny, white smoke going straight up from morning fires. Malcolm Smith, mounting his horse, turned again to his mountain. Sweet Rocket bade him good-by, but Linden and Marget said, "All who come together in this consciousness part no more!"
"I believe that."
He rode away, and in the afternoon was back with his work. But the inner eye might view, between mountain and Sweet Rocket, a shimmering, ethereal highway, a nerve, as it were, thrown from space to space, joining and making one.
Robert and Frances and Marget, on this last day of the Danes' visit, walked to the hill with the solitary tree atop. The sapphire day continued, quiet and sunny, the air being of an extreme fineness charged with light. Far and near the mountains made a cup of amethyst. Fields and hillsides at hand were a lighted umber. They saw long rows of stacked corn, and in the meadows hayricks. Beyond the orchard they made out the steep roof of thegreat barn. There were corn and wheat for the mill, there were stored apples. In the wood below them they heard the woodman's ax.
"I can see," said Robert Dane, "I can see that Humanity is mastering its own organism. I see that it is lifting toward Unitary Consciousness. Here, now, in this present year as in past years, each year now with greater momentum. Reaction and recoil, of course—but back again, and farther! Everywhere shows the swift inter-approach. All over, all through, America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the islands of the sea. The revolutions of our day are woven of it. We are leaving separation and partialness, fortress and dungeon."
"Yes. All our 'movements' rush into the one. All our vortices approach with a fearful joy the Great Vortex. The Correlation will be established, the Summation made. We go to join and strengthen the Ancient Heavens. The Ancient of Days draws and redeems and fuses and Ones another layer of his being. Faster and faster our age begins to see what is happening. The language men use to describe it does not so much matter. The poet names it Life, Beauty, and Joy; the scientific man says Knowledge and Use; the philosopher says Energy and Substance in conscious union; the Hindu says theSELF; our peoples say God.... All one."
They came to the hilltop and stood to look about them. "There is such joy!" went onMarget. "Pain and pleasure outgrown, now blooms the joy! 'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' The being found and the finding. One after another lays hand upon that world, clings, braces himself, draws himself up and over and finds the manna lying around him. Joy, wisdom and power! and the taste of them but begun. Possession still to be possessed—forever and forever!"
They sat beneath the tree and all around sprang the valley and the mountains and Virginia and the world. "Alive—deathlessly alive! The valley and the mountains, Virginia and the world!"
Frances spoke. "I know a woman who speaks in the terms of the East. Is it the Principle of Sensibility—the Buddhic plane?"
"Yes. Atma is yet to arrive. What we see is the light before his face. When he fully comes that is the Day of the Lord. What all work has been toward, all toil, all hoping. As Atma rises in us—as Christ rises in us—comes newer and richer life, fuller and fuller, inner powers and principalities, thrones and dominions, and their objective garments. But whenwe are the Lord—I know not! There is Light there that is as darkness to us yet."
The exquisite valley heightened its values throughout, became richer. The mountains around hung in the eye like the Delectable Mountains.
"If one grows, all things and all places grow with that one?"
"Inevitably so! The wealth is for all."
"The new consciousness that we feel is a pale film to what will be?"
"Yes. A borderland, the islands fringing the New World. But such as it is it wipes out the old, blind, scattered, little consciousnesses. To what shall be felt and shall be known it is the one leaf of green, it is the olive leaf that the dove brings. But before us are enormous growth, strange and fair adventure, work, joy, love—"
Through the air they felt the ether, through the sunlight they felt the Great Sun. Light and warmth came to them from the Sun behind the sun. It touched, it passed, but each time it came they strengthened.
That night by the fire they sat in silence that was full and rich and understanding. "To-morrow night, here at Sweet Rocket, just Richard and Marget and Drew—and all the rest of us!"
The next day dawned, and still it was Indian summer. Robert and Frances went from place to place, as had gone Curtin and Anna Darcy, saying farewell. "We wish and hope to bring our bodies here again next year. But if that is not done, still, still, still we shall have Sweet Rocket!"
"You have access now to all places and timesand peoples. You are through the gate, you two! All your good dreams now will come true. If not in this way then in that. Every dream that does no injury to the Whole."
Richard and Marget, Daniel and the phaeton, took them to Alder. The still forest was clothed to-day in purple. For much of the way silence held within the phaeton as without. But it was the silence that Anna Darcy had early noted. It was rhythmic, it was thronged, it was fused and made into the richest solitude.
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,Too full for sound or foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home."
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,Too full for sound or foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home."
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,Too full for sound or foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home."
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound or foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home."
Now and then they spoke. Once Robert said, abruptly, "And all the effort of the world is to stand and grow in grace?"
"Just. All the effort. Everywhere! Whether it be stone or plant or animal or man or over-man. And where the Emerging Character is so mighty none is to despise his brother's path or rate of speed. Once it was his own. Everything has been and is our own. Work! but who hates or despises halts and weakens the effort."
"But work!"
"Yes, steadily. In all realms. 'What thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might.' What thy judgment findeth to do. The other name of Lubber Land was Good Enough."
They came to Alder with its churches and sere gardens lying in violet light. Here was the little station—in a few moments they heard the train.
"Good-by!"
"Good-by!"
Frances and Robert looked through the car window. The platform had men, women, and children upon it. Two or three arriving travelers found friends to meet them; there were the workers about the station and the loafers, with country folk and village folk brought by some business, and in the throng Richard Linden and Marget Land. Just the usual village station. Then all of it sprang into light, into music, into significance, into importance. The train moved. There was a cry of "Good-by! Come again!" All seemed to enter into it, to cry it out.
The houses went by, the village street, the hills, the river, and all, all, and this train upon which they found themselves had color and music and significance and importance.
"The I that says of every living thing, 'It is I,' says it and means it and understands it and proceeds to live from it, says it of the total objective, and so takes the objective up into the Subject—that I is over the verge of the old into the New—"
The hills went by, the river gleamed.
Marget and Richard traveled homewardthrough the purple forest. To-day they hardly used the outer voice. The blind man sat with a smile upon his lips as though he saw, with such a face as could only have come from much seeing. The woman, too, sat still, the body relaxed, the spirit gleaming in the soul. Daniel drew them through the forest; nor did Daniel, either, lack some sense of growth, dim belief in a higher world, dim will to reach it. Below Daniel the forest felt that, and below the forest the rock. The utter stream of pilgrims—
THE END