Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/78

56 the sighs and regrets and fears and aspirations of men and women, our crooked smokes, which, in the language of Shakespeare, mount upwards to the gods.

In such an atmosphere Russians can forget personal anger when looking at the chains on their convicts, and they can see in those chains emblems of human destiny. There is in Russia a whole beautiful sad literature about chains and fetters. Hermits and holy men have even taken to wearing chains voluntarily as one of their rites of world-negation. Dostoieffsky could find Siberia, after personal experience, to be the supreme place for the understanding of the world.

We are encompassed about by mystery. Every common sight is a rune, a letter of the Divine alphabet written upon all earthly things. Man's heart is a temple with many altars, and it is dark to start with, and strange. But it is possible with every ordinary impression of life to light a candle in that church till it is ablaze with lights like the sky. That is the functions of ordinary sights—to be candles.

So the night of ignorance is lit up with countless stars. It is not less night but more, more beautiful—

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings.

At those places on the road where springs gush from the rocks the peasants have chalked the face