Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/117

 in brisk commerce. Somewhere in each desk one would find some hidden betrayal of that man's private worship. It might be some old newspaper clipping, perhaps a poem that had once touched him, for even the humblest poets are stout partisans of reality. It might be a photograph of children playing in the surf, or a little box of fish-hooks, or a soiled old timetable of some queer backwoods railroad or primitive steamer service that had once carried him into his land of heart's desire.

I remember a friend of mine, a man much perplexed by the cares of earth, but slow to give utterance to his inner and tenderer impulses, telling me how he first grasped the meaning and value of these inscrutable powers of virtue that hurl the whole universe daily around our heads in an unerring orbit. For some reason or other—he was writing a book, I think, and sought a place of quiet—he had drifted for some winter weeks to the shore of a southern bay, down in Florida. When he came back he told me about it. It was several years ago, but I remember the odd look in his eyes as he tried to describe his experience. "I never knew until now," he said, "what sunshine and sky meant. I had always taken them for granted before." He told me of the strange sensation of lightness and quiet smiling that had flooded through him in that land where Nature writes her benignant lessons so plainly that all must draw their own conclusions. He told me of sunset