"It is religion—"
"It always has been Religion."
"And the gloom and storm of our day?"
"It is not gloom, it is not storm. It is the pains of growth. Feel the epic and voyage that it is!... Every proper and general noun in all dictionaries now and to come is my name, as it is yours. Every verb is my doing, as it is yours. The use of language, use and dis-use, is mine as it is yours—"
They were walking in the orchard beneath the apple trees, whose leaves were slow to fall. There had been, this morning, a heavy frost. The garden flowers were going, the creeper over Mimy's house had shed its scarlet leaves, but held its dark-blue berries. The heavens hung a blue crystal. The air had the cool of mountain water.
It was the day when Anna Darcy must leave Sweet Rocket. After dinner Daniel and the phaeton and Marget would take her to Alder to the north-going train. Now, with Marget, she went the round of the place, saying good-by. They had been to Mimy's, and had talked to Mancy at the barn. "Come again!" said Mancy. "But you ain't really going, you know! Sweet Rocket will hold you, and you'll hold Sweet Rocket."
They came by the kitchen. Mimy was singing:
"Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home—"
"You gwine back inter the troubled world?" said Mimy. "They say hit's awful! But, Lord! there ain't any bars ter trouble! I've seen a lot."