It was the air which was struck, and which sent back the sound. You remember learning how light is turned back or reflected. Just as the light-waves come back again, so do the sound-waves; very quickly if the reflecting surface is near; after some time if it is far off. You know what an echo is. There is a lovely place where some children I know used often to go for a picnic. What they cared for most in Coombe Dingle was a wood which they called the "Echo wood." They would stand beside a gate, and call across the fields, and then listen. Very soon their own words, and even their own tones, were sent back to them. The waves of air carried the sounds along until they reached a pine wood which shut in the field. They struck the tall trees, and were reflected, or sent back again, almost as clearly as when first spoken.
Just in this way echoes of sound are, like birds, ever on the wing: the whole air is alive with them. The walls of our rooms give back the tones of our voices, but we hear no echo, because they are so near that the repeating of the sound comes almost at the same moment as the sound itself. There are echoes on all sides of us, and no sound is ever lost. How can this be?
If you stand beside a quiet pool, and drop a stone into it, the stone sinks down to the bottom and lies there; but from the spot where its fall broke the calm surface, ring after ring ripples the water. Just so a single word dropped from the lips of a child into the ocean of air is carried on, wave after wave; so that, as a great philosopher once said, "the air is one vast library, on whose pages is for ever written all that man has ever said or even whispered."
[Illustration: THE "ECHO WOOD">[
There is a poem which you may know, that begins with this line—
"Kind words can never die."
This is quite true; but we might alter the first part of it a little, and say, "No word can ever die." Not only the soft, loving words, but the rough, angry ones, which we may well wish we had never spoken, all live in this "vast library," and tell their own story.
How much it ought to make us think about our words, to know they can never be lost!
THE RED, RED SKY.
"In the early, early morning, beyond the islands green,
Beyond the pines and palm trees, and the purple sea between,
Like the glow through a crimson window the morning rises slow,
And the isles lie dun in the glory, and the sea is all aglow.