James Lane Allen

“ I remember thinking of
them when a boy as incense perpetually and reverently set free by
nature towards the temple of the skies. They aroused in me even then
the spirit of meditation on the mystery of the world; and later they
became in-wrought with the pursuit and enjoyment of things that had
been the delight of my life for many years. So that coming now, at the
very moment when I was dedicating myself to my hearth-stone and to
domestic life, this smell of wood smoke reached me like a message from
my past. ”

“ Often
she appears to be vainly hovering on the outside of a too solid sphere,
seeking an entrance to where I really am. Even during the intimate
silences of the night we try to reach one another through the throbbing
walls of flesh—we but cling together across the lone, impassable gulfs
of individual being.
During these October nights the moon has reached its fulness and the
earth been flooded with beauty.
Our bed is placed near a window; and as the planet sinks across the sky
its rays stream through the open shutter and fall upon Georgiana in her
sleep. ”

“ Walters talked a long time to Georgiana on the edge
of the porch.
Thus my wife and I have begun life together. I think that most of our
evenings will be spent in the room dedicated to a kind word for life
universal. No matter how closely the warring forces of existence,
within or without, have pressed upon us elsewhere, when we enter there
we enter peace. We shall be walled in, from all darkness of whatsoever
meaning; our better selves will be the sole guests of those luminous
hours. And surely no greater good-fortune can befall any household
than to escape an ignoble evening. ”