THE SALUTARY INFLUENCE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE WINDS HE wind that bloweth where it listeth certainly does TH wise man who said he that observeth the wind shall not sow. The futility of human science and resource in the face of nature still declares itself in the words of another venerable sage who says "they who plow the sea do not carry the winds in their hands." By land or water the wind roams free and furnishes every freedom-loving soul of earth the crowning simile for his dream or song. "I must have liberty withal, as large a charter as the wind," cries the awakened mortal in the green forest of Arden, and the specified privilege "to blow on whom I please” is one much coveted no doubt by other than Arden dreamers. To "go the wind's way," to be "free as the wind when the heart of the twilight is stirred" is an impulse known to other than the children of "vagabondia," though a majority of earth's children are fairly content if the kindly wind will but come their way in some free and generous fashion. The crowning worth of it in all human life and enjoyment can never be told, but may be strongly guessed by what the want of it means in any region of the earth. Stagnation and death settle down upon any spot where the still air receives no purifying current in the reviving breeze. The scorching simoon, or the raging blizzard are more merciful than the becalmed sea to human life, and the ancient poets who claimed fellowship with "brother wind" were not far wrong in the relationship.. It is not alone in death valleys or the silent sea of the Ancient Mariner that the life ministry of the wind declares itself by its absence. Strike camp in the southwestern portion of the Lone Star State for instance when summer suns burn hot and wait for the gulf breeze to find you, and "brother wind" will claim your love and reverence forever. "In fact "forty thousand brothers with all their quantity of love" could not make up the sum of comfort and delight this embracing breeze brings with it. There is a luxury and friendliness and life spell in it that verily does seem to give it a human character and purpose in its relation to men. It even seems to war with the fiery and adverse elements which the scorching land interposes. It is a curious feature of the air currents in this semitropic region that they will blow hot and cold almost in the same breath and even while a blast as from a red-hot furnace touches your brow, a cooling wave sweeps over it and claims the life victory. It is night, however, that perfects its reign. All the fiery cohorts of flaming day withdraw when the "hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain" sink over the western horizon and leave the grateful earth to the ministry of winds and waves that never slumber. Sweeter than the murmur "of doves in immemorial elms" is the soft play of the breeze through the feathery boughs of the mesquite trees that abound in this region. The rhythm of it, in the heart of such a forest, is soft and regular and soothing as the plash of the waves upon some sea-washed shore. Indeed, so like the murmur of waters is it that some call of the "deep entreating sea" seems ever sounding through it, yet with a tone so soft that no dream is lost in its bosom. Nights that would be unendurable, days that would savor of Gehenna, are thus made glorious by what men call the “vagrant winds," and beyond all of nature's forces commit to the fitful and elusive things of time-sometimes even the most malign agencies in time's path. Indeed, all powers of good or evil, love or hate, are commonly symbolized by them. From spirit birth to withering death writers, sacred and profane, make the winds their interpreters. As the wind that bloweth where it listeth and ye can not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the spirit, says the sacred word, in one strain, and in another pictures man as a flower of the field, that "the wind passeth over and it is gone." The poets in their own strong way repeat the opposing measures: Swift wind of God Quickening the clod, Give of the heavens strong writes one, and another cries bitterly: O summer, weep to see the havoc done Hath set on summer's brow the winter of its curse. Thus in his blindness and his joy or sorrow man hunts his God in the winds, and, from red man to white man, finds him benevolent or malevolent, much as the winds blow fierce or gentle. That any God of his worship rides in the whirlwind the best of saints rather shudder to believe, and an angry Pan "stamping his hoof in the night thicket" still lingers in the minds of many who inquire too curiously whence the wind cometh that makes cities crumble and man perish like a flower in its path. Neither science nor theology can master the problem of the winds, and to give them over to art and the common pathway they are graciously disposed to travel is no doubt the better part of that wisdom that is humble that it knows no more. At any rate it is here emphatically that "the troubled and uncertain element" in which we dwell calls, as Stevenson noted, for something that reason can not satisfy and art and human experience can turn to the best use. The poet knows this who says: Wind, breathe thine art Blow the wild sweet in, Let my song begin. What the winds bring to quicken both soul and body is of more interest to the children of earth than any knowledge of whence they come or whither they go. They have strains for all moods, and what they bring depends on what they find, somewhat as Ingersoll noted when he said: "Stand by the seashore, and what its wind-swept waves say to you will depend on what you are and what you have suffered." Yet in this "rhythm of land and sea" sounds forever, as in the quiring stars, that harmony that is in immortal souls, and more closely than the stars it brings the appeal home to man. It is no idle fancy of a local enthusiast which connects what he calls "the variety of sunny South Texas" with the soft gulf breezes that sweep over the wide plains and breathe in very truth the rhythm of both land and sea into human hearts and lives. "In this land of heart's delight,'" he says, "I have the feeling of being in an atmosphere of social sanity," and he calls to the nerve-racked denizens of the turbulent cities to flee from their discordant world into this wind-swept realm of happiness and harmony. It is verily the wind's call turned to place and people as the wind knows how. Secret and variable as are all its ways, it has a subtle power of adapting itself to all the varied phases of human life and surrounding. Out of the north cometh the whirlwind, says the Good Book, and though fortunately Brother Wind does not always present himself in quite such stirring fashion to the Northern man, yet he has a breezy note that fits the sturdy Northern nature better than the soft strains of the South. This Swinburne recognizes. Winds from the north and the south came to the making of man, he tells us. "They breathed upon his mouth; they filled his body with life." Surely, too, they left their spell upon him, for while the sharp breeze of the North is life and joy to the children of the North, for natures "sloping to the Southern side" the languorous airs and balmy zephyrs that come from sun-kissed gulfs and tropic seas bring truer benedictions. Out of his very joys and pains man plays into this spirit of the winds. Hurt souls seek ever, like the heart-sore King Arthur, some "island valley of Avalon where never wind blows coldly," while to the strong and heartwhole rings cheeriest the Zincale cry, "There's a wind on the heath, brother, there's a wind on the heath," and tramping the great North road seems the crowning bliss of being. That "joy of movement free," which one poet notes makes man kindred to the winds and to the sea, is strongest, no doubt, in strongest lives and natures, where health of both body and mind reigns unshaken. Breathing the North winds, defying the blizzard, "wantoning with the breakers" has a fascination for healthy and adventurous mortals. It is, as Stevenson observes, the pampered and enervated children of hot house airs and luxuries who cower behind walls and sealed windows when the wind roars its challenge to the strong. "Shrilly sound Pan's pipes; and behold, the banker 1 |