A Rough Shaking

It was a day when everything around seemed almost everythingdoes, now and then, come nearly right for a moment or two, preparatoryto coming all right for good at the last. It was the third week inJune. The great furnace was glowing and shining in full force, drivingthe ship of our life at her best speed through the ocean of space. Foron deck, and between decks, and aloft, there is so much more going onat one time than at another, that I may well say she was then going ather best speed, for there is quality as well as rate in motion. Thetrees were all well clothed, most of them in their very best. Theirgarments were soaking up the light and the heat, and the wind wasgoing about among them, telling now one and now another, that all waswell, and getting through an immense amount of comfort-work in asingle minute. It said a word or two to myself as often as it passedme, and made me happier than any boy I know just at present, for I wasan old man, and ought to be more easily made happy than any merebeginner.I was walking through the thin edge of a little wood of big trees,with a slope of green on my left stretching away into the sunnydistance, and the shadows of the trees on my right lying below myfeet. The earth and the grass and the trees and the air were togetherweaving a harmony, and the birds were leading the big orchestra--whichwas indeed on the largest scale. For the instruments were sodifferent, that some of them only were meant for sound; the part ofothers was in odour, of others yet in shine, and of still others inmotion; while the birds turned it all as nearly into words as theycould. Presently, to complete the score, I heard the tones of a man'svoice, both strong and sweet. It was talking to some one in a way Icould not understand. I do not mean I could not understand the I was too far off even to hear them; but I could not understand howthe voice came to be so modulated. It was deep, soft, and musical,with something like coaxing in it, and something of tenderness, andthe intent of it puzzled me. For I could not conjecture from it theage, or sex, or relation, or kind of the person to whom the words werespoken. You can tell by the voice when a man is talking to himself; itought to be evident when he is talking to a woman; and you can,surely, tell when he is talking to a child; you could tell if he werespeaking to him who made him; and you would be pretty certain if hewas holding communication with his it made me feel strange that Icould not tell the kind of ear open to the gentle manly voice sayingthings which the very sound of them made me long to hear. I confess tohurrying my pace a little, but I trust with no improper curiosity, tosee--I cannot say the interlocutors, for I had heard, and still heard,only one voice.