for any decent and sensible person to do follow him and cleave to him. The most convincing of arguments is not an argument but a feeling— feeling our need of Christ. So Gilder, in a moment of mental perplexity, writes:

"Thou Christ, my soul is hurt and bruised!

With words the scholars wear me out;

My brain o'erwearied and confused,
Thee, and myself, and all I doubt.

"And must I back to darkness go

Because I cannot say their creed?

I know not what I think; I know
Only that Thou art what I need."

His poetry sums up his life, and is a treasury of beauty and of melody. Lines which Gilder wrote in memory of another equally befit his going:

"When fell, to-day, the word that he had gone;

Not this my thought: Here a bright journey ends,
Here rests a soul unresting; here at last,
Here ends that earnest strength, that generous life-
For all his life was giving. Rather this

I said (after the first swift, sorrowing pang):
Radiant with love, and love's unending power,
Hence, on a new quest, starts an eager spirit-
No dread, no doubt, unhesitating forth
With asking eyes, pure as the bodiless souls
Whom poets vision near the central throne
Angelically ministrant to man,

So fares he forth with smiling Godward face;
Nor should we grieve, but give eternal thanks-
Save that we mortal are and needs must mourn."

THE WOODS AND THE INN

THE Woods in this case is the "Jersey Pines"; the inn, the "Pine Tree" at Lakehurst; but the woods and the inn, as used in this writing, are typical. This is not an advertisement of "the Pines" or of anything else—any more than it is a syllogism or a symphony, a table of logarithms or a conundrum; it is simply a discursive meditation, an impromptu, inspired by the woods and the inn.

"The Pines" is a vast tract of coniferous country in southern New Jersey, extending from the Atlantic Ocean to Delaware Bay, containing some hundreds of thousands of acres of pine mixed with oak, concerning which the State Geological Reports says: "The soil is dry, sandy, and absorbent, which, together with the aromatic breath of the pines, makes the region remarkably healthful." In the heart of that region this meditation was jotted down.

"This is the forest primeval"; for not since the region rose out of the sea and vegetation first grew has this tract been other than a wilderness, and so far are modern forestry and silviculture from touching it that one doubts if even Mr. Pinchot has ever heard of it. This might pass as that "vast wilderness," that "boundless con

tiguity of shade" for which the poet yearned; for its extent is such that the most ambitious pedestrian can walk as many miles in one direction as he cares to day after day without getting out of the wilderness region, but not enough to satisfy a certain public librarian, a slight little woman with gray hair, keen eyes, and a quick step, who said, "My idea of heaven is a forest where I can walk a thousand years, with a botany under one arm and a Dante under the other, and only people of my own choosing for company."

The manifold variety and charm of winter woods are unsuspected by those who do not visit them, and who probably imagine them to be a withered, dreary, uninviting waste; whereas their chaste and austere beauty is full of fascination and refreshment for those who yield to their appeal. Enough there is, even in winter, to make strong the lure of wagon roads and footpaths through the woods. Nothing less than a bit of nature's elegance is one of these tempting woodland paths, paved with clean, white sand which was once sea-bottom; paths silkily carpeted with pine-needles; paths margined with tufted and quilted mosses, mottled in grays and greens and darker hues, daintily embroidered and filigreed with delicate vines; paths hedged by wild shrubbery and thickets and the limitless arabesquery of the untamed wilderness.

These winter paths offer inducements quite as enriching, if not as numerous, as those of bar

gain counters in department stores. As health resorts they outrank stores, courtrooms and offices, parlors and lecture rooms, libraries and laboratories. Along their well ventilated aisles whoever goes out to "eat the air," as natives of India phrase it, finds that it tastes good: it has what Cable calls "the sweet, dry smell of salubrity"; and in these woods electricity and oxygen generate ozone-a tonic which tastes better than alcoholic and narcotic nostrums, and which "addeth no sorrow therewith."

Added to the hope of physical renovation to be found upon these paths, a promise of mental invigoration is definitely held out. A man who, by dint of sedulous industry, had acquired some of the brain-fag which caused Thackeray to write, "I have taken too many crops off the soil," chanced to read in a book on The Religion of Nature about "the mental strength that comes to those who make a comrade of Nature"; and at once he was moved by a feeling of personal destitution to go several miles into the woods to get some mental strength by coaxing Nature to be his comrade for a while. He got at least benefit enough to make him want to go again.

Only infants, valetudinarians, the aged, the "powerful weak,” the indolent, the preoccupied, and a few others are insensible to the enticements of woodland paths. A noble, wholesome, and inspiriting sight it was to see in rapid motion through the Lakehurst woods one glittering

white day the tall, slender, erect figure of a youthful superoctogenarian judge, swinging his long limbs in a loping stride, mile after mile, in the bracing winter air, pushing his fine, keen face against the north wind, his cheeks touched with the ruddy glow of outdoor exercise a spectacle well calculated by contrast to console one for having had to behold on city promenades some very different pedestrian feats, such, for example, as the saunter of the fatted prodigal, or prodigal calf, who totes his precious body along the pavement for the solemn and sublime purpose of giving his walking-stick an airing; or the perilous navigating of the billowy sidewalk by a gifted lawyer, coming down the street with his sea legs on, lurching alternately to larboard and starboard, with feet widespread, trying hard to prevent the tumultuous sidewalk from coming on board over his bow or his quarter, making one think of Robert Hall's vision of Satan, "The pavement heaved under him like the billows of the sea and he looked like majesty in ruins-majesty in ruins"; or the zigzagging of the doggy woman who makes a "bloomin' show" of herself as she plays the part of Lady in Waiting to his imperial dogship, attending him from station to station of his all too public pilgrimage along the avenue. A Washington Chief Justice remarked to his friend as they were passing such a sight, "When I see that, I always feel sorry for the dog that has to keep such company." By contrast,