The Choir Invisible

It was a day when the beauty of the earth makes itself felt like ravishing

music that has no sound. The air, warm and full of summer fragrance, was of

that ethereal untinged clearness which spreads over all things the softness

of velvet. The far-vaulted heavens, so bountiful of light, were an

illimitable weightless curtain of pale-blue velvet; the rolling clouds were

of white velvet; the grass, the stems of bending wild flowers, the drooping

sprays of woodland foliage, were so many forms of emerald velvet; the

gnarled trunks of the trees were gray and brown velvet; the wings and

breasts of the birds, flitting hither and thither, were of gold and scarlet

velvet; the butterflies were stemless, floating velvet blossoms."Farewell,

Kentucky! farewell!" he said, looking about him at it all.

Two hours passed. The shadows were lengthening rapidly. Over the forest,

like the sigh of a spirit, swept from out the west the first intimation of

waning light, of the mysteries of coming darkness. At last there reached his

ear from far down the woodland path the sounds of voices and laughter--again

and again--louder and louder--and then through the low thick boughs he

caught glimpses of them coming. Now beneath the darker arches of the trees,

now across pale-green spaces shot by slanting sunbeams. Once there was a

halt and a merry outcry. Long grape-vines from opposite sides of the road

had been tied across it, and this barrier had to cut through. Then on they

came again: At the head of procession, astride an old horse that in his

better days had belonged to a mounted rifleman, rode the parson.

He was several yards ahead of the others and quite forgetful of them. The end of

his flute stuck neglectedly out of his waistcoat pocket; his bridle reins

lay slack on the neck of the drowsy beast; his hands were piled on the

pommel of the saddle as over his familiar pulpit; his dreamy moss-agate eyes

were on the tree-tops far ahead. In truth he was preparing a sermon on the

affection of one man for another and ransacking Scripture for illustrations;

and he meant to preach this the following Sunday when there would be some

one sadly missed among his hearers. Nevertheless he enjoyed great peace of

spirit this day: it was not John who rode behind him as the bridegroom:

otherwise he would as soon have returned to the town at the head of the

forces of Armageddon.

Behind the parson came William Penn in the glory of a new bridle and saddle

and a blanket of crimson cloth; his coat smooth as satin, his mane a

tumbling cataract of white silk; bunches of wild roses at his ears; his

blue-black eyes never so soft, and seeming to lift his feet cautiously like

an elephant bearing an Indian princess.