As one meditates in this evening hour, the darkness has gathered over the world and folded it out of sight. The few faint stars have become a shining host, and the immeasurable heavens have substituted for the near and familiar beauty of the earth their own sublime and awful commingling of unsearchable darkness and unquenchable light. So in every human life the near and the familiar is overarched by infinity and eternity. Chapter XIX The Turn of the Tide For days past there have been intangible hints of change in earth and air; the birds are silent, and the universal strident note of insect life makes more musical to memory the melodies of the earlier season. The sense of overflowing vitality which pervaded all things a few days ago, when the tide was at the flood, has gone; the tide has turned, and already one sees the receding movement of the ebb. Through all the vanished months of flower and song, one's thought has travelled fast upon the advancing march of summer, trying to keep pace with it as it pushed its fragrant conquest northward; to-day there is a brief interval of pause before the same thought, following the sunshine, turns south again, and seeks the tropics. A little later the spell of an indescribable peace will rest upon the earth, but a peace that will be but a brief truce between elements soon to close in struggle again. To-day, however, one feels the repose of a finished work before the first mellow touch of decay has come. The full, rich foliage still shelters the paths upon which the leaves have not yet fallen; the meadows are green; the skies soft and benignant. The conquest of summer is still intact, but here and there one sees slight but unmistakable evidence that the garrison, under cover of night, is beginning its long retreat. In such a moment one feels a sudden sense of loneliness, as if a friend were secretly preparing to desert one to his foes.