Those Times and These

by Irvin S. Cobb

“For a little while he did nothing except stand in his tracks, transfixed and transfigured. He saw the sky and the sunlight and the earth and the grass and the shadows upon the earth and the trees and the flowers that were about him—saw them literally in a celestial vision; and he smelled the good wholesome smells of the earth, and the scents of the struggling, straggling flowers in the ill-kept flower beds, and the scents of the green things growing there too.

“And just then, as though it had known and had been inspired to choose this instant for bringing to him yet another sensation, a thrush—a common brown thrush—began singing in an elm tree almost directly above him. Of course it was merely a coincidence that a thrush should begin singing then and there. Thrushes are plentiful enough about the country in this climate at this season of the year. Central Park is full of them, sometimes. Most of us scarcely notice them, or their singing either. But, you see, with this man it was different. He literally was undergoing re-creation, re-incarnation, resurrection. Call it what you please. It was one of those three things. In a way of speaking it was all three of them.

“At the first note of music from the bird he gave a quick start, and then he threw back his head and uplifted his face; and quite near at hand he saw the little rusty-coloured chap, singing away there, with its speckled throat feathers rising and falling, and he heard the sounds that poured from the thrush's open beak. And as he looked and listened he put his hands to his breast as though something were hurting him there. He didn't move until the bird had fluttered away. Nor did we move either.

“Then he turned and came stumbling and reeling toward us, literally drunk with joy. His intoxication of ecstasy thickened his tongue and choked him until he, at first, could not speak to us. After a bit, though, the words came outpouring from his lips.

“'Did you hear that?' he cried out. 'Did you hear it? Do you smell the earth and the flowers? And the sky—I have seen it! I can see it now. Oh, hasn't God been good to us to give us all this? Oh, hasn't He been good to me?'

“In an outburst of gratitude he seized the hand of my friend and kissed it again and again. I had meant to take notes of his behaviour as we went along, but I took none. I knew that afterward I could reproduce from memory all that transpired.

“Presently he was calmer, and the surgeon said to him:

“'My son, there is something yet to be seen—something that you, having so many other things to see, have overlooked. Look yonder!' And he pointed to the West, where the sun was just going down.

“And, at that, the other man faced about and looked full into his first sunset. Instantly his whole mood changed. It became rapt, reverential—you might say worshipful. His lips moved, but no words came from them at first, and he made as though to shut out the sight with his hands, as though the beauty of the vision was too great for him to endure. I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder. He was quivering from head to foot in an ague of sheer happiness. He seemed hardly to know I was there. He did not look toward me. He kept his eyes fixed upon the West as if he were greedy to miss nothing of the spectacle.

“Until now the sunset had seemed to me less beautiful by far than many another summer sunset I had seen, for the sky was rather overcast and the colours not particularly vivid; but, standing there beside him, in physical contact with him, I caught from him something of what he felt, and I saw that glow in the west as some-thing of indescribable grandeur and unutterable splendour, a miracle too glorious for words to describe or painters to reproduce upon squares of canvas.