Page:Six months in Kansas.djvu/62

picture came to me, up among the hills, whither, in summer, we all love to take flight. It was August, when nature works so effectually that she can afford to seem idle; when the stillness of every growing thing is equal to the great progress it is making towards its fullness; when the white rolling clouds skim over the deep blue sky in heavy, harmless profusion. From the tea-drinking of a farmhouse, with those who were dearly beloved, we entered a by-road for a twilight ramble. The sunset was most magnificent. We stood in silence till it sank below a fine wood in the distance. Clouds of the most gorgeous colors followed in the train: then a space of that clear, warm blue which often is to be seen before twilight, and, hanging above it, a heavy white drapery. We turned to look. A cry of one note—an instinctive clasping of every hand. We stood before the prophet again! clearly cut from that fleecy cloud, of size colossal, yet grandly proportioned. O, that it should ever fade away ! The prophet of my childhood, came to me again! Not a word was spoken till the picture merged itself in the masses of cloud. And, even to this day,