The enterprise. [volume] (Harlem, Mont.) 1899-1926, 1909-06-16

while and walt on the SANDS. some
day he will sail YEARLY back, looking
for the love that he never found else
where, to find when he returns, may
hap, only the runes and the desolate
water-marks. Now is your time, old
fellow. Take yourself by the hand, let
yourself climb up on your knees and
enfold you in protective innocence and
reproach you with warm kisses. There
is millennial touch in it, believe me,
for you will have gotten rid OF your
carnivorous egotism and will lie down
with the lamb. A touch OF prophecy,
too, If you will but remember. For is
1t not written that a little child shall
lead them?'"
Literally to renew ones youth, &C.
cording to the doctors prescription,
turned out to be series of gracious
surprises. With Charles hand In mine
I walked into some mysteries that
gladly turned into revelations. We
took up with some toys in our mag
nations, and let the real fairies into
our experiences, so that little curtains
were lifted all around us on worlds
unrealized.
One hot day we lay fiat ON our stom-
achs under the shade Of a beech,
among the June grass and the daisies,
peering down into magical spec
tacle, and yet it was the planets his
tory in petto. The great loom Of the
universe was working there with mini
allure continents. It was a paleonto-
logical glimpse Of the pre-world, as II
nature kept ceaseless memoranda in
shorthand Of all her monstrous cycles
of change. There were the equatorial
forests and the prehistoric monsters.
All one had to do was to get the In
verse scale adapted, and the gigantic
fronds waved their plumes, and
strange forms of life wandered
through. Green leviathans crouched
in corners; scurrying termites ran
hither and thither. A slow'moving an
gleworm drew his ophidian length
along the ancient geologic reaches,
and an armored pterodactyl, in the
shape of dragon fly, came in flaming
gorgeousness like Apollyon, and picked
up an inhabitant or two. Here was the
oldest Nibelungen Lied going on still,
with real dragons amid the real ele-
ments in this demiurgic workshop.
Somehow l fancy that Wagner, when
he heard the eternal melodies, must
have been lying on his stomach and
looking at the eternal animate forces.
But what is the use Of trying to get
| these child-like experiences over into
| literature? One must be Thoreau to
do it. When I Intercepted the mys-
| teries like Hamlet, there was Charlie
with his round, implicit face, and he
| seemed to say to me: "You want to
| know the secret of nature; we'll, you
| will have to become an obedient part
of it, then you will know, but you will
lose the power and the desire to tell
it."
That boy never makes any demon
stration over a sunrise, and he looks
at me wonderingly when I begin to
cavort and effuse He seems to be
more familiar with the processes than
I am. They are spectacles and cpl
sodes to me. Heavens, it is always
sunrise with him; why make such a
fuss over it? And that is the way with
souls that live close to nature--they
take 1t as matter of course because
they are part of 1t, and that is where
Cooper made such a mistake with his
Natty Bumppo, who was always going
about attitudinizing and philosophizing
about that which such man would
unconsciously appropriate. Even Poe
with all his genius, failed to lie on his
the field. His Raven" and his anna
bel Lee" are not arrayed like one OF
these. Fancy him writing the Flow
er de Luce" of Longfellow, or the
"Chambered Nautilus of Holmes O,
the water Fowl" of Bryant. If he ha6
been guided by the implicit faith Of
the boy, he would have taken the ad
vice of the guide in Dante's Inferno
when he came to some of the horrors
Look, and pass on
think we grew quite like Brahmin!
under our mango trees. The entir.
population Of the woods, having come
to the conclusion that we were eithe
too effeminate or too orthodox to xii
anything, took advantage of our help
lessness. The squirrels came in a
the window In the morning. The wood
chucks sat on their launches on GU
wire grass. The rabbits made bul
, rows under our hearthStone. We coul
hear them scolding their broods a
, night and humping their heads agains
the flooring. The woQd-turtles crawle
. in over our sill, ana the young one
dropped out of Charles pockets a
, night when he hung his trousers owe
chair. AS for the birds, they r,
minded me of the gamins in Franl
, fort street. They gathered in front {
our door in the morning and waited t
!, be fed, and there was never a nigl
, that bat or two did not manage I
. worm himself into our confidGne
. when we were trying to sleep. 1t We
very amusing to see the complacel
contempt with which Lilah, the ye
! low dog, and Gabe Hotchkiss regarde
=, this extraordinary tolerance. But