Almost as soon as it was perceived the vision began to fade, receding slowly into the formless, tenuous clouds of semi-consciousness. In a moment the sleeper awoke. For an instant it was difficult to disassociate from the spirit of his dream the golden light of the early spring morning, the twittering of birds, the light drip from the eaves of the brief rain left by the vanished April shower.
The later history of the spot where Cousin Mary dwelt offers its commentary on a fast changing civilization. Soon after her death the little brick house was pulled down and the cubic space it occupied was filled with heavy machinery which daily filled with its reverberations this place which was once the very epitome of quietude. Now, in their turn, the huge presses have given way to one corner of a vast office building where an army of busy clerks pursues the urgent and exacting routine of a great corporation.
The Latin poets liked to believe that every locality had its own peculiar divinity—the "genius of the place." What has become of the goddess who for so long dedicated to peacefulness this abode of a benign old age? Is it that she was so closely identified with the one who dwelt there that when that life ceased the guardian angel fled with the departing spirit to some still fairer abode—or is the genius of the place really called Memory, who, in the minds of those who cherish her, effectually preserves against any merely material desecration the places she once held dear?
XIV: The Quiet Life
"More than half a century of life has taught me that most of the wrong and folly which darkens earth is due to those who cannot possess their souls in quiet; that most of the good which saves mankind from destruction comes of life that is led in thoughtful stillness."
—The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.