Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/180

174 the Wallamet. Here, in a fine grove of firs, we have seen the order and devotion, the sociality and recreation, of a basket-meeting. Between the hours of service the people disperse themselves in all directions, to lunch, and to talk over church affairs—perhaps the prospect of a crop; for this is the season of rest for the agricultural population—between "seed-time and harvest."

The scene is very picturesque. White tents, and rough board cabins, are thickly placed among the trees. In the centre of the grove is the spreading roof, supported on rustic pillars, under which the congregation gathers at stated hours for religious services, and where the speaker's desk is placed, with it great bouquets of roses and sweet-scented garden flowers—contributions from the ladies to the adornment of the rude pulpit. Here and there a covered wagon serves as a temporary home; for many of these people crossed the plains years ago, and know to how many uses a covered wagon may be put. Young people are flitting about from tent to tent—older ones are receiving company at their own doors; tables are spread in the shade, at which hungry people do justice to hasty cookery; a hum of subdued voices fills the air with a pleasant murmur, which accords well with the soft sighing of the trees, the stir of insects in the air, and the flow of the pebbly stream close by.

That "the groves were God's first temples" strikes us forcibly under circumstances like these. The devotional spirit comes more easily and quickly, and with more power, in immediate contact with Nature, than when coaxed and stimulated into exercise by the appliances of art. In the age when architecture was really and truly an art, this truth was seized upon;