How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, I must tell the Vedders that. And two or three times I found myself in animated conversations with them in which I generously supplied all three parts. It may be true for some natures, as Leonardo said, that "if you are alone you belong wholly to yourself; if you have a companion, you belong only half to yourself"; but it is certainly not so with me. With me friendship never divides: it multiplies.
A friend always makes me more than I am, better than I am, bigger I am. We two make four, or fifteen, or forty.
Well, I loitered through the fields and woods for a long time that Sunday forenoon, not knowing in the least that Chance held me close by the hand and was leading me onward to great events. I knew, of course,that I had yet to find a place for the night, and that this might be difficult on Sunday, and yet I spent that forenoon as a man spends his immortal youth--with a glorious disregard for the future.
Some time after noon--for the sun was high and the day was growing much warmer --I turned from the road, climbed an inviting little hill, and chose a spot in an old meadow in the shade of an apple tree,and there I lay down on the grass, and looked up into the dusky shadows of the branches above me. I could feel the soft airs on my face; I could hear the buzzing of bees in the meadow flowers, and by turning my head just a little I could see the slow fleecy clouds, high up, drifting across the perfect blue of the sky. And the scent of the fields in spring!--he who has known it, even once, may indeed die happy.
Men worship God in various ways: seemed to me that Sabbath morning, as I lay quietly there in the warm silence of midday, that I was truly worshipping God. That Sunday morning everything about me seemed somehow to be a miracle,--a miracle gratefully accepted and explainable only by the presence of God. There was another strange, deep feeling which I had that morning, which I have had a few other times in my life at the rare heights of experience--I hesitate always when I try to put down the deep, deep things of the human heart--a feeling immeasurably real, that if I should turn my head quickly I should indeed SEE that Immanent Presence. . . .
One of the few birds I know that sings through the long midday is the vireo. The vireo sings when otherwise the woods are still.
You do not see him; you cannot find him; but you know he is there. And his singing is wild, and shy, and mystical. Often it haunts you like the memory of some former happiness. That day I heard the vireo singing. . . .
I don't know how long I lay there under the tree in the meadow, but presently I heard, from no great distance, the sound of a church-bell. It was ringing for the afternoon service which among the farmers of this part of the country often takes the place, in summer, of both morning and evening services.
"I believe I'll go," I said, thinking first of all, I confess, of the interesting people I might meet there.
But when I sat up and looked about me the desire faded, and rummaging in my bag I came across my tin whistle. Immediately I began practising a tune called "Sweet Afton," which I had learned when a boy; and, as I played, my mood changed swiftly, and I began to smile at myself as a tragically serious person, and to think of pat phrases with which to characterize the execrableness of my attempts upon the tin whistle. I should have liked some one near to joke with.
Long ago I made a motto about boys: Look for a boy anywhere.
Never be surprised when you shake a cherry tree if a boy drops out of it; never be disturbed when you think yourself in complete solitude if you discover a boy peering out at you from a fence corner.
I had not been playing long before I saw two boys looking at me from out of a thicket by the roadside; and a moment later two others appeared.
Instantly I switched into "Marching Through Georgia," and began to nod my head and tap my toe in the liveliest fashion. Presently one boy climbed up on the fence, then another, then a third. I continued to play. The fourth boy, a little chap, ventured to climb up on the fence.
They were bright-faced, tow-headed lads, all in Sunday clothes.
"It's hard luck," said I, taking my whistle from my lips, "to have to wear shoes and stockings on a warm Sunday like this."
"You bet it is!" said the bold leader.
"In that case," said I, "I will play 'Yankee Doodle.'"
I played. All the boys, including the little chap, came up around me, and two of them sat down quite familiarly on the grass. I never had a more devoted audience. I don't know what interesting event might have happened next, for the bold leader, who stood nearest, was becoming dangerously inflated with questions--I don't know what might have happened had we not been interrupted by the appearance of a Spectre in Black. It appeared before us there in the broad daylight in the middle of a sunny afternoon while we were playing "Yankee Doodle." First I saw the top of a black hat rising over the rim of the hill. This was followed quickly by a black tie, a long black coat, black trousers, and, finally, black shoes. I admit I was shaken, but being a person of iron nerve in facing such phenomena, I continued to play "Yankee Doodle." In spite of this counter-attraction, toward which all four boys turned uneasy glances, I held my audience.
The Black Spectre, with a black book under its arm, drew nearer.
Still I continued to play and nod my head and tap my toe. I felt like some modern Pied Piper piping away the children of these modern hills--piping them away from older people who could not understand them.
I could see an accusing look on the Spectre's face. I don't know what put it into my head, and I had no sooner said it I was sorry for my levity, but the figure with the sad garments there in the matchless and triumphant spring day affected me with a curious, sharp impatience. Had any one the right to look out so dolefully upon such a day and such a scene of simple happiness as this? So I took my whistle from my lips and asked:
"Is God dead?"
