The Choir Invisible

Yes, this property would suit him; it would suit Amy. It was near town; it

was not far from Major Falconer's. He could build his house on the hill-top

where he was lying. At the foot of it, out of its limestone caverns, swelled

a bountiful spring. As he listened he could hear the water of the branch

that ran winding away from it toward the Elkhorn. That would be a pleasant

sound when he sat with her in their doorway of summer evenings. On that

southern slope he would plant his peach orchard, and he would have a

vineyard. On this side Amy could have her garden, have her flowers.

Sloping down from the front of the house to the branch would be their lawn, after he

had cleared away everything but a few of the noblest old trees: under one of

them, covered with a vine that fell in long green cascades from its summit

to the ground, he would arrange a wild-grape swing for her, to make good the

loss of the one she now had a" Major Falconer's.

Thus, out of one detail after another, he constructed the whole vision of

the future, with the swiftness of desire, the unerring thoughtfulness of

love; and, having transformed the wilderness into his home, he feasted on

his banquet of ideas, his rich red wine of hopes and plans.

One of the subtlest, most saddening effects of the entire absence of

possessions is the inevitable shrinkage of nature that must be undergone by

those who have nothing to own. When a man, by some misfortune, has suddenly

suffered the loss of his hands, much of the bewilderment and consternation

that quickly follow have their origin in the thought that he never again

shall be able to grasp. To his astonishment, he finds that no small part of

his range of mental activity and sense of power was involved in that

exercise alone. He has not lost merely his hands; much of his inner being

has been stricken into disuse.

But the hand itself is only the rudest type of the universal necessity that

pervades us to take hold. The body is furnished with two; the mind, the

heart, the spirit--who shall number the invisible, the countless hands of

these? All growth, all strength, all uplift, all power to rise in the world

and to remain arisen, comes from the myriad hold we have taken upon higher

surrounding realities.

Some time, wandering in a thinned wood, you may have happened upon an old

vine, the seed of which had long ago been dropped and had sprouted in an

open spot where there was no timber. Every May, in response to Nature's

joyful bidding that it yet shall rise, the vine has loosed the thousand

tendrils of its hope, those long, green, delicate fingers searching the

empty air. Every December you may see these turned stiff and brown, and

wound about themselves like spirals or knotted like the claw of a frozen

bird.