Have been here four or five days, in cloud and mist and rain. One bright sunset, two pleasant afternoons, on the last of which there was the most beautiful phenomenon that we call “the sun drawing water.” I never looked down upon the earth through that many tinted transparency of sun and mist before. It was wide as the whole West, and the tints of green upon the nearer hills were brought out with softest intensity. It was like an open fan of thinnest gossamer, wavering in all possible hues between us and the landscape. But the sign was true. It has rained steadily for three days and nights.
August 27. Monday and Tuesday there was a fine sunset and sunrise, and four travelers were up here to enjoy it. But yesterday the mist and cloud rolled up from the valley again, and in the night a southeast storm set in, preceded by the same sign in the east that was in the west last Thursday. It is one of the signs of approaching rain,--the clearness with which the summits and ranges are outlined through the mist. They are most dreamily lovely, so. I thought yesterday how much the earth and sky were alike, on these high places. It was hard to tell which was mountain and which was cloud.
September 6. A week of great beauty in cloud-scenery, though with little sunshine. Most suggestive phases of cloud and mountain interblending; I have been out in it everywhere I could; twice at sunrise, when I was well rewarded by the glory in the east. The days seem so short! I was foolish to bring books up here,--and yet I have found them companionable now and then. “God in his World” I have re-read--it is a book for the heights.
February 4, 1891. Boston. In my room at the Hoffman House these last two weeks. I could not get settled earlier; others were occupying it. But I love this room, because I have lived so intensely and deeply in it; because I have had revelations in it of God and his truth, of human friendship, of the inmost meanings of life. The very walls seem alive to me sometimes. Every place where we have met God, and come to feel Him as the reality in all things, is holy ground.
One of the pleasant things of the last month was my visit to Wheaton Seminary, and the meeting with Mr. Brooks there, and hearing him speak to the girls, making them more happy, and helping them much, as I have to-day heard. His presentation of Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, has led one, at least, to a decision for herself, that Christ is the Son of God. I like to meet new friends in my old haunts. I have lived through some painful and some delightful experiences at Norton, struggling and groping in solitude through formal dogma and doctrine into spiritual truth, for there was none with me, and my way of thinking was accounted heresy. But I felt beckoned into clearer light than there was around me, and I followed in silence. I first read Maurice there, and F. W. Robertson, who opened doors for me which have never since been closed. And I taught my pupils, giving them what I had received, truths which I felt were unquestionable, and I knew, while there, that it was not wholly in vain, though I had access to but a few. Now I go back, and I find the whole school apparently ready for this clearer spiritual light, and I am glad. We must love places where we have truly lived,--even in heaven we shall remember them.