July 15th. The birds are not kind today, even here in the Garden. It is a grey evening, for one thing, and the light is bad for spying out secrets among the leaves. The weather is misty and damp, promising the rain we need; but everything is dry from recent heat, and the insects may be less juicy than usual, and not very tempting eating. Anyway, the birds are not here.
The mist, with the dim light of the evening sun upon it, spreads a film of silver over the blues and greens of the mountains. Down in the valley it deepens till all the colors are faint and soft, from the pale stubble of the nearer wheatfields all up the long valley between the mountains, to where the dim blue of the great battlefield melts into the dim blue of the sky above it.
It was down this Valley, over the road at my feet, that the men of the Southern army tramped after the battle was lost. My own kinsmen were there, following their great leader with the rest, as he passed through the Valley of Defeat. How much seemed lost to them, who can say? But to us of a later generation how plain it is that nothing was lost at Gettysburg which it were well to keep. The really priceless thing they brought away unharmed—the courage which could accept defeat, and turn, without a murmur, in the wreck of the old order, to the upbuilding of a new world. That was a struggle which the world even now knows little of, though it was as wide as the South and as long as a generation’s life-time. It was fought singly, and in silence, in each individual life. Each soul bled inwardly, and only God saw the wounds. But I have sprung from men who fought that fight. Let me look at the Valley, and learn.
July 18th. The wind is at play in the mountains today, and sweeps up the Valley with a sound as of rushing waters, bending the trees before it. The long shadows under the swaying branches know not a moment’s rest; and the racing clouds shift the shafts of sunlight so rapidly from place to place that the very earth seems moving, like the lightest leaf. Few birds are abroad, save the robins, which battle against the unseen powers of the air, only to be blown like autumn leaves. A thrasher, dashed suddenly in front of me, began at once a philosophic hunt for worms—one place was as good as another, no doubt; but a young robin, the black of his crown still separated from the dark ear-coverts by bands of gray, crouches frightened where he falls. His half-drooped wings show a power which explains his venturing abroad; he is full grown, though not yet in full robin dress. He is learning the old lesson of the young: that there are things in life which not even grown-ups can do; and that his liberty is merely a liberty to adjust himself to forces which he cannot hope to control. No wonder he looks a bit dazed!
The Mistress of the Garden comes out presently to look after her flowers. Her face is good to see, and her voice to listen to. Her eyes have the look of one who dwells in that place of peace where happiness and sorrow are fused into one, and are known as equal essentials of the highest joy. She is a lover of Nature, too. One inevitably comes to be, I think, as one travels the long road to serenity of soul. One may observe Nature in youth, no doubt, and love it, too, somewhat; but the real sense of kinship with it is a matter of living, and of growth.
July 25th. Blessed be trees and sunshine, the open sky, and the free winds which fill it! And blessed be the freshness and promise of the new day, coming alike to the light-hearted and to those pain-weary and discouraged.
And the promise never fails. For, whether the new day brings escape or courage, relief or a growing power of patience, whether it means joy or peace, it brings good, and only good; and so through all the soul its sursum corda rings with sweetness and command.