How far away the Whirlpool and its people seem as we sit perhaps on one of the many tiny river islands enjoying this time separateness, not as individuals, but as a family, for the whirl of the pool is tiresome even to watch. I have felt old these last three months, and I suppose it is a still further carrying out of the allegory and penalty of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge; only the discipline does seem a little hard when, having no desire either to pluck or taste the apple, one stands actually away with hands safely behind back, and yet has the fruit absolutely thrust between unwilling lips. Even the feathered things about us are in this mood; their family life is over, the companionship of fall travel has not begun, and the woods are full of moulting birds choosing this separateness in preparation for the tension of new flight and its perils. Everything, in short, in wild nature has its corresponding note in our own humanity,--the sweating of the corn, the moulting of the bird, the contraction of the earth by frost, all have a kindred season or experience in the heart. Then, too, the August nights--so heavy with the intensity of sleep that is akin to sleeplessness, broken by peremptory thunder voices and searching lightning, or again enveloped by moonlight that floods the room--shut out the world until, kneeling in its tide between the little white beds, I can feel the refrain of that hymn of mother's that father taught me long ago to say to myself in the night when she had gone away from sight and I was lonely:-- "Father, on thy heart I lean When the world comes not between." * * * * * _August_ 30. Sylvia and Horace were married under sunshine yesterday in the little chantry of the church that is used in winter and for week-day services. To-day the cold northeasterly storm has come, under cover of which August so often disappears and September enters the marshes upon the wings of low-flying plovers, to the discordant call of the first waterfowl of the return migration. Mr. Latham came to the wedding. In fact, he has been here several times during the month. He is a well-built man, under sixty, dark and taciturn, and would be handsome but for the hard expression of his face. His attitude toward the world has seemed to be one of perpetual parry and self-defence; of course he may have good reason for this distrust, or, as Evan says, he may have brought the necessity upon himself by his constant severity of attack on others. Yesterday I partly changed my mind about him. He evidently once had tender feelings, but, from what cause who can say, they have in some way been compressed and frozen until they exist only as hurts.