Ever And Again A
Little Wind Went By, And The Nuts Dropped All Around Me, With A Light And
Dull Sound, Upon The Sward.
The noise was as of a thin fall of great
hailstones; but there went with it a cheerful human sentiment of an
approaching harvest and farmers rejoicing in their gains.
Looking up, I
could see the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already
gaping; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheatre of hill,
sunlit and green with leaves.
I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an atmosphere
of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. But perhaps it was
not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. Perhaps some one was
thinking of me in another country; or perhaps some thought of my own had
come and gone unnoticed, and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which
sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their
features; as though a god, travelling by our green highways, should but
ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, and go again for
ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love with folded wings? Who shall
say? But we go the lighter about our business, and feel peace and
pleasure in our hearts.
I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the condemnation of a
young man, a Catholic, who had married a Protestant girl and gone over to
the religion of his wife. A Protestant born they could understand and
respect; indeed, they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman,
who told me that same day there was no difference between the two sects,
save that 'wrong was more wrong for the Catholic,' who had more light and
guidance; but this of a man's desertion filled them with contempt.
'It is a bad idea for a man to change,' said one.
It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase pursued me; and
for myself, I believe it is the current philosophy in these parts. I
have some difficulty in imagining a better. It's not only a great flight
of confidence for a man to change his creed and go out of his family for
heaven's sake; but the odds are - nay, and the hope is - that, with all
this great transition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a
hairbreadth to the eyes of God. Honour to those who do so, for the
wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, whether of strength or
weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in those who can take a
sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and human operations, or who
can quit a friendship for a doubtful process of the mind. And I think I
should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for other
words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and
find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions.
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