Now I believe that God _means_ that odour of the
bean-field; that when Jesus smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in
Galilee, he thought of his Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if
I should never smell it again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age
should make me deaf as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope
you are too, or will be before you have done with this same beautiful
mystical life of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's
books of poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest,
perhaps.
And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in a
word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the brightness
of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a little weary,
lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping towards the
earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the brightness of the morning star,
ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that brightens at the
sun's approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its light, and somewhat
sad because severe.
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