Page:The heart of Monadnock (IA heartofmonadnock00timl).pdf/171

 There the unceasing business of daily concerns sets the dust of the highway of life awhirl and all this fills the lungs and blurs the vision. Ground out of the rasping contacts of life, how all the grit of idle words and pettinesses, the jealousies and bits of malice and cruel slander choke the heart! How the crash of competition deafens the ears! You human beings grow to take these for granted, hardly realizing that you are being slowly stifled with the gross air in which so much of life must be passed, and that you are hearing only the mad din of the commonplace. Scarcely do you even realize that anything has been amiss, until you find yourself away from it all, when something catches you up into the upper realms of the soul where you can see all things clearly and hear the harmonies of celestial chords.

"Just as your body needs the freshness and purity and freedom from material dust, even so your soul needs to mount to sunny heights far distant if it would live and