The sense of the confinement of the building ceased. Insensibly I seemed to see the hewn stones of the walls assume their primeval and untouched state beneath the grasses of the hills. I could feel the rafters vanishing and going back into the bodies of the oaks in which they originally grew. The voice of the organ remained with me, but it might have been the roll of the waves upon the shore. I was in the Temple. In the Temple, one needs not seek for names.

It was night. I lay upon a bank of sweet-smelling grasses, and about me were the great oaks. The organ, or the waves, spoke on. I looked up, up, into the great circle of the sky, so far, so blue, so kind in its bending over, so pitying it seemed to me, yet so high in its up-reaching. I looked upon the glorious pageant of the stars.

“That star,” thought I, “shone over the grave of some ancestor of mine; back, back in the unmirrored past, some father of some father of mine. He is gone, like a fly. He is dust. I may be lying on his grave. Soon, like a fly, I, too, shall be dead, gone, turned into dust. But the star will still shine on. Small as that father’s dust may be, that dust still lives. It is about me. This grass, these trees, may hold it. He has lived again in the cycle of natural forces. My dust, when I am dead, will in turn make part of this world, one of an unknown sea of stars. Small then, as I am, I am kin to that star. The stars go on. Nature goes on. Then shall man—shall I—”

“Ah,” said the Singing Mouse, its voice sounding I knew not whence; “from this place can you see?”

So now I thought I began to see what I had not seen before. And since this was in the land of the Singing Mouse, I sought to find no name for what I saw, nor tried to measure it. What one man sees is not what another sees. Shall one claim wisdom beyond his neighbor? Are not the stars his also, and the trees his, to talk with him? Are not the doors always open? Does not the music of the organ ever roll, do not the voices always rise?

Had it not been for the Singing Mouse I should not have thought these things.

Where the
City Went

One day there was a white frost that fell upon thecity, lasting for many hours, so that a strange thing happened, at whichmen wondered very much. The city put aside its colors of black and brownand gray, and dressed itself in silvery white. No stone nor brick wasseen except in this silvern frosty color. All the spires were glitteringin silver, and all the columns bore traceries as though the hands ofspirits had labored long and delicately and had seen their tenderfretwork frozen softly but for ever into silver. The gross city had putaside corporeal things, and for once its spirit shone fair and radiant;so thatmen said no such thing had ever been before.

That evening the frost still remained, and as the night came on amist fell upon the city. From the windows men looked out, and lo! thebeautiful city so made spiritual was vanishing. One by one the greatbuildings, the tall spires, the lofty columns had faded into a whitedream, dimmer, fainter, less and less perceptible, seen through a gentleenvelope of whitening haze. This thing was of a sort almost to make onetremble as he looked upon it, for the city which had been silver hadturned to mist, and the mist seemed fair to turn into a dream. There arethose who say it did become a dream, and afterward descended. Forwanderers in desert countries tell that at times they have seen some farcity ofdreams, alluringly beautiful, but evanescent, intangible, unattainable,trembling and floating upon the wavering air.