Page 20 - 1911 November - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 17

FANCIES

There is a wind to-day. I have been out in it, for I heard it
calling and needed no second bidding. It is not the wind of sweep-
ing gusts and grey capricious clouds, or that of driving fog and
racing mists, and seas of much wonder and fear. I t is not one of
those summer breezes bringing beauty without appreciation, and
dreams without ambition. These are all well in their way, but this
wind is different.

I cannot tell you from where it comes or whither it goes, for I
do not know, I only know that it races over the brown slopes and
that I race with i t ; that it strikes upon my forehead and blows back
my hair, and in some strangely indefinable way gives a worthy feeling
of strength and courage and ambition. I watch it whirl a weary
heap of leaves into the air, and defy them to find one another again,
and undying devotion to some brother who became such because
lie down upon the brown earth, and hear it whirring over me and
searching for me, perhaps.

Do you know this wind? There is a strange sense of companion-
ship about it. For when I rise and come home with it across the
brown fields, dark in the half-light and purple shadows—I say
"good-night" to a friend.

I wonder i f you love the insects as I do, and have missed them
as much as I have. You see, they are friends of mine. I have never
stopped to consider whether the friendship is born of affinity or
congeniality. I t does not matter, anyway.

I have never seen these friends of mine, but I began to know them
last summer, when I spent the long evenings listening to them.
And as f a l l came on and they still stayed, they began to compensate
for many things. They made me cheerful in the morning when I
went to work, and hopeful at noon when I came home, and glad at
night when I was weary after the day. They are like so few
people, for they sing without showing themselves, and that seems to
me a rare virtue.

I tried to find two one day last November. 1 meant to put them
beneath a lose board in my floor; for I reasoned that on winter
evenings when the fire was bright, I should have no want for music,
I could not find them, though they sang beneath my fingers, which
were searching in the brown grass.

I remember how they sang last October on the nights of the
harvest moon. I thought, as I leaned from the window of my room