fied in asking such a question of the new minister. I am sure he will never see me again without thinking of it and I will always writhe when I catch his eye upon me.
“But now that I have written it out in my diary I don’t feel so badly over it. Nothing ever seems as big or as terrible—oh, nor as beautiful and grand, either, alas!— when it is written out, as it does when you are thinking or feeling about it. It seems to shrink directly you put it into words. Even the line of poetry I had made just before I asked that absurd question won’t seem half as fine when I write it down:
“It doesn’t. Some bloom seems gone from it. And yet, while I was standing there, behind all those chattering, eating people, and saw darkness stealing so softly over the garden and the hills, like a beautiful woman robed in shadows, with stars for eyes, the flash came and I forgot everything but that I wanted to put something of the beauty I felt into the words of my poem. When that line came into my mind it didn’t seem to me that I composed it at all—it seemed as if Something Else were trying to speak through me—and it was that Something Else that made the line seem wonderful—and now when it is gone the words seem flat and foolish and the picture I tried to draw in them not so wonderful after all.
“Oh, if I could only put things into words as I see them! Mr. Carpenter says, ‘Strive—strive—keep on—words are your medium—make them your slaves—until they will say for you what you want them to say.’ That is true—and I do try—but it seems to me there is something beyond words—any words—all words—something that always escapes you when you try to grasp it—and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t reached for it.
“I remember one day last fall when Dean and I walked over the Delectable Mountain to the woods beyond it—fir
