One evening towards the end of July, when the summer is at its heat, and
makes the world feel as if there never had been, and never ought to be
anything but summer; and when the wind of its nights comes to us from
the land where the sun is not, to tell human souls that, dear as is the
sunlight to their eyes, there are sweeter things far with which the sun
has little to do--Hester was sitting under a fir-tree on the gathered
leaves of numberless years, pine-odors filling the air around her, as if
they, too, stole out with the things of the night when the sun was gone.
It happened that a man came late in the day to tune her piano, and she
had left him at his work, and wandered up the hill in the last of the
sunlight. All at once the wind awoke, and began to sing the strange,
thin, monotonous Elysian ghost-song of the pine-wood--for she sat in a
little grove of pines, and they were all around her. The sweet
melancholy of the hour moved her spirit. So close was her heart to that
of nature that, when alone with it, she seldom or never longed for her
piano; she _had_ the music, and did not need to hear it. When we
are very near to God, we do not desire the Bible.
Pages:
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296