Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/536

526 woman's dark hair—it is in such visions as these that red gives us its emotional thrill altogether untouched hy pain. If the 'multitudinous seas' were indeed 'incarnadined' for us in 'one red/ if the sky were scarlet, or all vegetation crimson, the horror of the world would be painful to contemplate for nervous systems moulded to our vision of nature. Our eyes have developed in a world where the green and blue rays meet us at every step, and where we have in consequence been almost as dulled to them as we are to the weight of the atmosphere that presses in on us on every side. It is under the clouded skies of northern lands that blue is counted the loveliest of colors; it is in the desert that green becomes supremely beautiful and sacred.