Her rising sweet with song of earliest birds;
Pleasant the sun, when first on this delightful morn
He spreads his orient ray o’er herb, tree, fruit and flower,
Glistening with dew.
Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers,
And sweet the coming on of grateful evening mild.’”
The Man seemed musing to himself instead of talking to me, and I thought he had been talking without special point, for he was now silent, seated with back toward me, looking from the window; but it came to me like a flash without his explaining in words that the glimpse he had given of the history of the earth was only a summing up of the history of the soul of man. I saw the hordes of barbarians intent on conquest come streaming out from back of Assyria over into Macedonia, into Greece. I saw the teeming millions of Persia sink struggling beneath the sinking swale, and Greece come forth with men noble, gentle, refined, compared with what men were before them. Rome appeared, and I thought surely the carboniferous period was coming back with its poisonous fumes when Cæsar passed over into Gaul, then Britanny.
For centuries the earth gave forth no sign; but suddenly I saw a woman—not an ideal one to be sure, but men lifted their hats to the Virgin Queen, and with the Elizabethan age came a Spencer and a Shakespeare.
Surely the flowers had begun to bloom, the woods were full of song of birds, and I knew The Man was thinking of the What-Is-To-Be when he slowly and softly repeated the verse I have written. He turned and looked at me—our eyes met in firm, gentle embrace. Perhaps we both smiled, and he knew I understood. I had made a great stride to the front. He had spoken to me without words on a subject I had never thought of. I had received the message and I felt that this was just the beginning—only six o’clock in the morning.
I knew all he would say of atmosphere—that if body can not live excepting in a right atmosphere, neither can spirit; for over and over had I heard The Man say, “The material world is only symbol—behind each physical fact is a spiritual truth. Each planet has its own physical atmosphere varying according to its development.”