There
were only the hollow blue heavens above us and the level green
prairie around us,--an immensity of intense loneliness. We seldom
saw a cloud in the sky, and never a pebble beneath our feet. If
we could have picked up the commonest one, we should have
treasured it like a diamond. Nothing in nature now seemed so
beautiful to us as rocks. We had never dreamed of a world without
them; it seemed like living on a floor without walls or
foundations.
After a while we became accustomed to the vast sameness, and even
liked it in a lukewarm way. And there were times when it filled
us with emotions of grandeur. Boundlessness in itself is
impressive; it makes us feel our littleness, and yet releases us
from that littleness.
The grass was always astir, blowing one way, like the waves of
the sea; for there was a steady, almost an unvarying wind from
the south. It was like the sea, and yet even more wonderful, for
it was a sea of living and growing things. The Spirit of God was
moving upon the face of the earth, and breathing everything into
life.
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