  I stood by my study window after dark. An electric light a few blocks distant, cast shadows of the small limbs of a tree upon the window-pane. Those shadows were in constant motion because of the wind blowing through the trees. Through the dancing shadows I saw the brilliant light against the darkness of the western sky. My breath condensed into moisture on the cold glass, and through that moisture the electric light shone in the center of a brilliantly-colored circle, composed of myriads of pencils of light, radiating from the dazzling central point. As the moisture evaporated the pencils became fewer and coarser, bright lines and fragments of lines, rather than pencils. A few breaths on the glass, more moisture condensed and again the pencils were in myriads. I enjoyed the small but brilliant view in the same spirit in which I enjoy the starry heavens on a grand mountain outlook. As I looked I thought of many things. I thought of my own mind with its wondrous thinking machinery; I thought of my eyes and of their marvelous mechanism by which the brain received so much thought-producing material; I thought of the burning furnace within my body that sent out heated air laden with the invisible vapor of water; I thought of the laws of heat and cold by which that vapor was instantly condensed and became visible when it came in contact with the cold glass; I thought of the transparent glass and of all the changes it had passed through since it was a mineral in the primeval rocks; I thought of the tree with its naked branches whose fibers were being toughened by constant wrestling with the wind; I thought of the leaves that in a few weeks would cover those twigs and conceal from me the electric light; I thought of the invisible air with its strange elements and properties, and of the laws of meteorology that produced the wind; I thought of the electric wire and of the distant copper mines from which it came; I thought of the mysterious force that we call electricity, of the coal, the engine, the machinery, that produce it, and of the light that it produces; I thought of the mysterious thing that we call light and of the laws of light that gave me those penciled rays; I thought of the things that were made for “glory and for beauty” as well as for practical utility; and I thought of God. And so, according to such knowledge as I had of psychology, of physiology, of physics, of meteorology, of botany, of mineralogy, of chemistry, of optics, of electricity, of esthetics, and of natural theology, were my thoughts manifold, rich, suggestive, correlated, inspiring, spiritual even, in their last analysis. That which to many would be a thing of no interest, a commonplace sight not worth a second glance, was to me full of beauty, tinged with glory, spiritually helpful, and an occasion for praising and worshiping God. Roselle Theodore Cross. BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER. |
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