instantly concealed in the bank parlor!" he exclaims, and no doubt the ecstasies as perchance some of the agonies of life are missed thereby.

Certainly the sum of human experience is sensibly diminished by any feeble or midway course or custom which refuses to take the rough with the smooth, the terror with the delight, which the winds of heaven and the winds of destiny have brought to the making of life on this earthly planet. Fortunately, the homely old adage which declares it an ill wind that blows nobody any good favors a gracious acceptance of the wind's way, even where least desired, and though it may be mixed up with all man's moods and impulses, it curiously escapes connection with his evil tempers and arraignments of fate in finer spirits. Shakespeare gives a true expression of this when he makes the houseless King Lear, exposed to the raging blasts of winter, murmur sadly, "Blow, winds! rage! blow! I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness." And again in the familiar lines in "As You Like It":

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude.

The sentiment, if not the strain, is caught by a modern writer who said of a Turkish outbreak, "A whirlwind or earthquake is found to be kind, gentle and soothing compared with a Moslem." The poet who in her recent song imputes the nature of human hate to the raging winds strikes a different note from the majority of earth's singers. In measures grave or gay they follow the wind's free way beyond the narrow bounds of the moralities, with their weary burden of good and evil, love and hate. But it is Henry Borrow who really chases it down to its true place in the

world of nature and life. And so we come back to the great North road and the gypsy's song:

There's night and day, brother,
Both sweet things;

There's sun, moon and stars, brother—

All sweet things.

There's a wind on the heath, brother,

A wind on the heath,

And just to hear that I would

Gladly live forever.

THE SECRETS OF NATURE AS REVEALED BY THE NIGHT

N

OT the least of the boons the summer holds for man

is acquaintance with the night. A "dead, monotonous period" to people "who cower under roofs" during much of the year, night becomes the hour of luxurious comfort, beauty and infinite outreaches of being when summer opens her starry realms of endless space, and quietude, and grandeur, to mortal sense and sight. Most any of earth's children feel the great thoughts of space and eternity in the majestic hour somewhat as Walt Whitman did when he exclaimed in his night watch on the prairie, "How plenteous! how spiritual. I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not day exhibited. I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me, myriads of other globes.”

But even for those whose thoughts and feelings stray no farther than their own hushed little globe, summer night's peace and loveliness enfolds them like a spell. Shapes and moving shadows take on the enchantment of a new and airy world which Shakespeare himself could scarcely portray. The commonest domestic animal moves like a milk white doe through rustling branches or thickets and the veriest freak in human form may claim the poet's benediction: "Bless thee bottom; bless thee! thou art translated." The waking senses feel no need of slumber for any perfection of rest, or if perchance "an exposition of sleep" comes over them, the dream it induces is "past the wit of man to report,"

so subtly is it mixed with all the mystic influences in nature's outdoor world. The summer world which at last has wooed men from fashionable hotels and country palaces into fields and forests, where "God keeps open house" is restoring a long lost wealth of beauty and strength that the children of the morning knew in their open tents, and their mossy pillows, and their altar stairs of worship which, like Jacob's ladder, climbed nightly to the stars.

aye

The span of life which stretched on into the centuries may well connect itself with this tent and outdoor life of patriarch and Arab. It is certain that the civilized life that shut man away from nature's closest ministry began at once to shorten his days and rob his nights of their life-giving power. For, as Stevenson says, "what seems," what is “a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear nature breathing deeply and freely and even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles, and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses when a wakeful life influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere which all outdoor creatures feel." It is then, he says, that "men who have lain down with the fowls open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night." It is then that they share some life thrill of mother earth below their resting bodies. It is a "nightly resurrection" wrapped in the deep mysteries of nature which "even shepherds and old country folk best read in these arcana can not fathom." Yet any child of earth may share it with all outdoor creatures if, wooed by the summer night, he will leave his stifling walls and curtains and lie down in the open starlight and become "for the time being a sheep of nature's flock." It seems to be a part of nature's generous offerings that they are freest to

the humblest and, as the student of her night gifts and glories declares in "Love's Labour Lost,"

Those earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

It is true enough of life's rarest offerings that ofttimes "Light seeking light doth light of light beguile," and to let "soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony" in troubled breasts, without asking how or why is the true Arden philosophy which the "fool in the forest" understands perchance better than the sage. The sound which is back of silence in all creation's bounds stirs in the pulse of night as if a myriad insect throats and whirring wings were striving to keep tune with the very music of the spheres. Every leaf and blade is alive with these tiny choristers, bringing to the soft night, freed from the din of garish day, touches of sweet harmony that only those who go out into the bosom of night can ever know. The wonder of it breaks like a revelation from the unseen upon the unaccustomed ear, nor can any amount of familiarity destroy the spell of the universal and the invisible which throbs in undertones to the music of the world. What gifts of grace attend the tremulous strains for mortal beings Wordsworth noted well when he said of nature's sweest child:

"The stars of midnight shall be dear to her."

"And beauty born of murmuring sound shall pass into her face."

It is not sleep alone that acts as nature's sweet restorer in the stilly night. Sleep indeed is like a feverish nightmare without the soothing influence which wind and open