Your account of O'Meara's death affected me deeply. With what sublime abandon does such a man let go his soul into the mystery of that silence which we call eternity! Is it not strange how the same impressions come to many, but by different ways! "It will be long before I forget how alien and far-away the noises of the street sounded as I passed out of that chamber of silence," you said, and the sentence recalled a somewhat similar experience of my own on Cumberland Island, where father and I went last summer for a short vacation. One day, leaving the group of happy bathers to their surf, I climbed up inland among the sand-hills, that lie along the shore like the white pillows of fabulous sea-gods. Presently I came upon one of those great sand-pits that stretch along the Island, deep and wide like mighty graves. Far below me a whole forest stood in ghostly silence, with every whitening limb lifted in supplication, as if all had died in a terrified struggle with the engulfing sands. Unawares, I had happened upon one of Nature's griefs--and I do not know how to tell you, but the sight of it aged me. Of a sudden this death of the trees seemed a far-off part of my own experience. I was swept out of this contesting, energetic world into a still region where great events come to pass in silence, and inevitably. And so real was the illusion that, as I turned to hurry back, it seemed to me that centuries had passed since I saw the same little tuft of flowers like a group of purple fairies nodding to me from the top of a tall cliff. And so I stood there confused by the significance of this silence, so incredible that even the winds could not shake it. I felt so near and kin to death that I became "alien" to all the living world about me. For the first time in my life, I lost the _sense_ of God, which is always a kind of mental protection against the terrors of infinity. There was nothing to pray to, only the sea on one side and this grave on the other, with a little trembling life between.