As I write, the memory of a summer afternoon long ago comes back to me. The old orchard sleeps in the dreamy air, the birds are silent, a tranquil spirit broods over the whole earth. Under the wide-spreading branches a boy is intently reading. He has fallen upon a bit of transcendental writing in a magazine, and for the first time has learned that to some men the great silent world about him, that seems so real and changeless, is immaterial and unsubstantial--a vision projected by the soul upon illimitable space. On the instant all things are smitten with unreality; the solid earth sinks beneath him, and leaves him solitary and awestruck in a universe that is a dream. He cannot understand, but he feels what Emerson meant when he said, "The Supreme Being does not build up Nature around us, but puts it forth through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new branches and leaves." That which was fixed, stable, cast in permanent forms forever, was suddenly annihilated by a revelation which spoke to the heart rather than the intellect, and laid bare at a glance the unseen spiritual foundations upon which all things rest at last. From that moment the boy saw with other eyes, and lived henceforth in things not made with hands. If we could but revive the consciousness of childhood, if we could but look out once more through its unclouded eyes, what divinity would sow the universe with light and make it radiant with fadeless visions of beauty and of truth! Chapter XI The Heart of the Woods